tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11306221094250933012016-12-06T19:56:42.981-05:00Radiator BlogVideo game level design, mods, literature, and academia.Robert Yanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05595128450637115574noreply@blogger.comBlogger568125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1130622109425093301.post-27644726209323670112016-12-05T19:48:00.002-05:002016-12-06T19:56:43.022-05:00A progressive future for VR: why VR is already getting worse, and how to make it better<a href="http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2016/11/for-better-or-worse.html" target="_blank">Last time</a>, I wrote about how I think of game culture as too conservative and too product-oriented to truly change or redirect toward more artistic ends -- and I confessed that over the next few years, I'm going to start transitioning out of working in games, and more into"virtual reality." Why? First, let's talk about what's happening in VR right now.<br /><br />The audience isn't really flocking to VR yet. Only&nbsp;<a href="http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/" target="_blank">about ~0.21% of Steam users have Vive headsets</a>, which means about ~200,000 users in the entire world. This slow VR adoption makes sense, considering how the Vive is still really expensive at $800.00, and there's still a lot of unpleasantness to using VR, from simulation sickness to judder to obtrusive tethers, but these are all engineering problems that the industry thinks they know how to solve. In 2017, we'll start seeing tetherless third party headsets, and then in 2019-2020 one of the big three (Valve, Oculus, Sony) will presumably sell a technically-refined "VR Jesus" headset that will finally save us all... or maybe it'll just turn out to be another Kinect rotting in your closet.<br /><br />Until then, even the most embarrassing VR evangelists are preaching patience for 3-5 more years. But it would be a huge mistake to "wait and see" until VR is a success or a total waste of time. Artists and queers and weirdos need to hit VR now, and hit hard, before VR culture ends up as conservative as the worst of gamer culture. Why is it worth saving?<br /><br /><a name='more'></a><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="330" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zXWNNm4WIVE" width="560"></iframe><br /><br />Imagine video games except AAA titles barely exist, and thus no one can pointlessly compare you to them... and that's the current state of VR.<br /><br />If we get in early enough, we can define the general public's first significant impressions of VR, and influence how people value VR experiences. We need to develop the theory, the language, and the touchstones that others will have to adopt in order to seem fluent -- we need to be the new normal here, and we could possibly do it, because no one else has defined the norms yet.<br /><br />How much should your VR thing cost? How long should it be? What art style should it have? In video games, these are all leading questions with an embarrassingly narrow range of acceptable answers. But right now in VR, half your players will barely be able to tolerate more than 15 minutes per session -- how can they possibly demand 15 hours of gameplay?<br /><br />However, this window of opportunity will close within the next few years. Let capitalism and customers wait 3-5 years for VR to mature... meanwhile, we need to act now. We're running out of time to mold and shape this early "VR culture" into something less terrible.<br /><br />Unfortunately, the bad news is that VR culture is already getting worse.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9uJZaSN52-E/WEWyffXvq4I/AAAAAAAAFN4/gU0hH0RvlrwG_fPt9QmQiC77A_VAZY5kwCLcB/s640/vr_worse_bullshit-social.jpg" width="540" /></div><br />I've met industrial VR developers who view harassment and internet toxicity as something they can just A/B test away -- as if the perfect user flagging system, or the perfect neural net AI trained against racist speech, will magically fix everything. Even the most well-intentioned VR developers think culture is a generalized case that programmers can "solve" with the right system design.<br /><br />But a few years ago when&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy" target="_blank">the entire video game industry was faced with a deep cultural crisis with an obvious morally correct choice, they basically did nothing</a>&nbsp;because it would've meant much more work and less money. Almost every major game company stayed silent as misogynist internet fascist conspiracy-theorist failsons harassed women out of the game industry. The game industry failed, catastrophically, in moral and cultural leadership; it prioritized short-term stability in exchange for huge apocalyptic long-term losses and losing any semblance of a soul it had left.<br /><br />Now guess who's leading the charge for VR?...<br /><br />The very bad news is that the big three VR platform holders (Valve, Oculus, Sony) are led by game industry veterans who want to perpetuate even more of their moral failure. They regard gamer culture as a success, and would be ecstatic if they were able to replicate similar results for VR consumer culture -- gamers obsessed with numbers and fidelity that developers can optimize, and <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2016/10/05/on-walking-simulators-game-journalism-and-the-culture-wars/#24c0696c36d0" target="_blank">gamers who attack any radical experimentation</a> that companies can't easily commercialize.<br /><br />The game industry looks at Steam reviews like this, and their eyes light-up like dollar signs:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-E5vTAOTjcRc/WEWy-XvPXMI/AAAAAAAAFOA/nCkJ2ZpYnnkWj9Zkwb5hRo5Fig4DLOvpgCLcB/s1600/vr_worse_project-syria_review.jpg" /></div><br />Just last month, <a href="http://www.polygon.com/2016/11/4/13507754/project-syria-steam" target="_blank">Steam users bombarded Nonny de la Peña's VR documentary "Project Syria" with angry hateful reviews</a>. While I'm not a fan of this type of work and empathy tourism is a dead end, I still think this project deserves to be available on VR without harassment. These toxic conservative factions of gamers are already claiming Steam as their "territory" and attacking experimentation in VR.<br /><br />If gamers harass you, it's because the <a href="https://www.magicalwasteland.com/notes/2014/8/22/the-king-and-his-objects" target="_blank">gamer consumer-king</a> thinks you deserve it. Your experimental art would be so lucky as to run on that gamer-emperor's titanium graphics card with limited-edition gunmetal finish! Yep, everyone gets what they deserve on Steam... even Valve tacitly buys into this poisonous thinking; <a href="https://twitter.com/steam_spy/status/786258866916831232" target="_blank">their business dev manager proclaimed at Steam Dev Days that "Steam is a meritocracy" and "only the good games rise to the top."</a>... Yeah, tell that to all the creators on Steam who get drowned in hateful bullshit every day. Tell that to the developers at Hello Games, <a href="https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/inside-the-nasty-backlash-against-no-mans-sky" target="_blank">who get death threats every day</a> because these unrestrained emboldened radical conservative gamers think No Man's Sky did not offer enough "value" for their video game dollars.<br /><br />This cannot, and must not, be the foundation for VR culture.<br /><br />So in this current political climate, it's up to us to act decisively, and act now. We need comprehensive action on multiple levels, before it's too late. If VR turns out to be successful and vital, then we'll thank ourselves for our foresight to prepare; if VR turns out to be a failure and waste of time, then it's OK because we'll have wasted only a few years on it.<br /><br />I think the main goal should be to <b>insulate VR culture from conservative gamer culture's "demands" and imposed norms.</b> How do we do it? Here's a few possible ways:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="351" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-H-8FsoEqxcU/WEX9PkSnd6I/AAAAAAAAFOQ/zQxAKBZiQQcsCa_x14yYL4Rx3YvJg4W0QCLcB/s640/vr_worse_itch.jpg" width="540" /></div><br /><b>Create, use, and promote, an independent VR content platform.</b><br /><br />A less-toxic VR culture requires a less-toxic VR platform where we can distribute new VR experiences without begging for approval.<br /><br />Steam will always be a hostile environment, but Valve claims that they want to keep their runtime <a href="https://github.com/ValveSoftware/openvr" target="_blank">OpenVR</a> "open" and they'll never require VR headsets to route through Steam. In theory, this technically opens up the possibility for an independent VR store that manages your VR library with in-VR dashboard, but with more freedom and accessibility than Valve or Oculus will ever allow artists on their own stores.<br /><br />As a current user of <a href="http://itch.io/">itch.io</a> and the <a href="https://itch.io/app" target="_blank">very good itch app</a>, I think itch.io would be a wonderful candidate for a progressive VR platform. If you're not familiar, itch is currently the "Bandcamp of video games" -- a permissive online store system that lets anyone upload their stuff, with very creator-friendly systems in-place, like the ability to set what percentage the service takes from each sale, which can even be as low as 0%. When I first made my experimental gay sex video games, no one would let me distribute my games except itch.<br /><br />What if itch.io became known as "THE place to see interesting artistic VR"? (Currently, that place is nowhere. Who will it be?) Then we can just let the zombie shooting galleries have Steam, while <i>the rest of society</i> has itch.io? etc.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yKNIzzViEe8/WEX_vfNLJYI/AAAAAAAAFOY/iI48qYlyHBkiwd-V6hPCll9y6arD61z9gCLcB/s640/vr_worse_tribeca.jpg" width="540" /></div><br /><b>Seek stronger and more sustainable collaborations outside of the game industry.</b><br /><br /><a href="https://tribecafilm.com/festival/virtual-arcade" target="_blank">The film industry is very interested in VR</a>, which could provide a very beneficial influence -- the film industry's baggage is totally different from the game industry's. For instance, women are a huge part of the movie-going audience, so what if the VR industry actually gave a shit about women? What would romantic comedy VR look like? The film industry influence also invokes new business models, like, will big budget VR-film productions have to use unionized crews like the film industry, or would the anti-union game / tech industry take control? Or what if you didn't have to buy and operate all this VR equipment at home, what if you could just go to a VR theater and pay a few dollars to use one, and you just use VR occasionally?<br /><br />That said, film culture will not automatically fix gamer culture, and we know this because casual game culture already <strike>failed</strike> stopped giving a shit about us -- ten years ago, when the Facebook games / mobile games market first started growing, hopeful gamer bloggers and critics predicted this <a href="http://www.jesperjuul.net/casualrevolution/" target="_blank">"casual revolution"</a> would force society and gamers to normalize their everyday relationship with video games. Finally, young angry male gamers would be forced to share the "gamer" identity with their moms, and video games could now be a great big inclusive space!<br /><br />... Instead, the casual revolution was cancelled. Mobile game users (i.e. the rest of society) didn't want to be associated with gamers, and this rejection just radicalized the most poisonous strains of gamer culture even further.<br /><br />So if we want film to help VR, we will have to work to help protect them from reactionary gamers too. I can guarantee you that Nonny de la Peña is much more wary of publishing her documentary work on Steam now. Is that "the price" that she's just supposed to pay for working in VR? If we can't let man-child gamers intimidate experimental game makers, then we can't let them intimidate experimental film makers either... or else the film industry really will lose interest and leave, and we'll be left alone... again.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.geocities.ws/am16/" target="_blank"><br /><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8ghW6qGIBSI/WEYGth1QtcI/AAAAAAAAFOo/-4o0Z0WZixQVoWSKh-DFIGG4DaL7iCXZwCLcB/s1600/vr_worse_mixtape.gif" title="if only they sold it together as one package..." /></a></div><br /><b>Experiment with new ways to fund VR artists and creators.</b><br /><br />We shouldn't follow the conventional game industry model where you invest years of your life into a big product launch with even bigger marketing support. This is unsustainable practice, and the indie game dev community's transformation into a young businessmen's league is partly to blame -- once you lose any radical artistic agenda, the only thing that differentiates indies from AAA industry is that indies are poorer and have less resources.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2013/11/games-without-gamers-imagining-indie.html" target="_blank">This is something I've been talking about for a while</a> -- why are game designers always supposed to sell their work directly in a market? Aren't there other ways of making a living? Why can't we figure out these new ways? Imagine making VR for a wedding, as if you were a wedding planner or a caterer. Imagine public institutions commissioning VR to engage their communities. Why can't we imagine anything outside of Steam?<br /><br />I mean indie games basically did invent the now common practice of "bundling" old games together to squeeze some last few sales dollars out of them, and all the bundle infrastructure existed independent of Steam. Don't stop with that ingenuity.<br /><br />We also need to develop new theory about what bundling does for an interactive digital work. For instance, <a href="https://juegosrancheros.itch.io/fantastic-arcade-2016" target="_blank">Fantastic Arcade commissioned 5 games for a bundle</a> to support their local games event, <a href="https://devswithferguson.itch.io/bundle" target="_blank">Devs with Ferguson</a> was a bundle to support protests against racism and police brutality, and recently <a href="https://itch.io/b/149/a-good-bundle" target="_blank">A Good Bundle</a> raised $150,000+ for the ACLU and Planned Parenthood. No one is saying bundles are perfect activism, but at least these bundles ask us to re-imagine what the game bundle could symbolize, and what do bundles mean, and how bundles work.<br /><br />Or better yet, let's stop calling them bundles, and develop a new set of language entirely. What if they were <a href="http://www.geocities.ws/am16/" target="_blank">mixtapes</a>? Why not make a VR mixtape, or a VR sketchbook? What can't all of us VR weirdos get together? Will this be a regular thing we all do? What if VR mixtapes came to define VR culture, the way they defined audio cassette culture? etc.<br /><br />***<br /><i><br /></i><i>(tldr: I have AAA and VR industry friends who do good work, but as an industry they basically depend on + fear&nbsp;gamers, so these companies can't be trusted to rein-in on toxic gamer behavior; history proves their complicity; so we need to make sure VR culture stays insulated from gamer culture, somehow, or we'll get dragged down with them again too)</i><br /><br /><a href="http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2016/11/for-better-or-worse.html" target="_blank">Remember, we already failed once. We were way too late.</a> Let's try not failing again.<br /><br />***<br /><br />For the record, I don't hate Oculus or Valve, <i>unchecked tech capitalism is a bigger problem that makes victims of us all, etc.</i><br /><br />And despite my criticism, I've only had good interactions with their developer relations people. If you're a poor experimental game developer or artist who wants to get into VR, then I strongly suggest e-mailing Callum Underwood (Oculus) or Chet Faliszek (Valve) about getting some kit. While I don't like how they're willing to throw VR to the gamers, that also means they're willing to give weirdos a chance, just as long as VR gets big and popular somehow, they don't care how. Again, just send them a nice concise e-mail about who you are and what you make, and you never know...Robert Yanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05595128450637115574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1130622109425093301.post-25476716917719409122016-11-30T12:48:00.000-05:002016-11-30T12:58:59.333-05:00Level With Me: a new Twitch livestream show about level design, Wednesdays at 6 PM ESTRegular readers of this blog will note that <a href="http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2015/09/on-my-games-being-twice-banned-by-twitch.html" target="_blank">Twitch continues to ban my gay games from broadcast</a>, and their policy is intentionally vague and ambiguous, and the selectively-enforced rules are designed more to punish and intimidate small independent game developers rather than maintaining any moral code or community norms.&nbsp;<a href="http://www.polygon.com/2016/7/14/12187898/banned-on-twitch" target="_blank">I've complained to the internet at-large</a>; then <a href="http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2016/03/the-game-industry-needs-to-get-laid-and.html" target="_blank">I went to GDC and complained to a captive audience of thousands of game developers</a>; and of course, nothing has changed.<br /><br />This calls for a new strategy: build-up an audience on Twitch, and eventually start advocating for change on the Twitch platform itself.<br /><br />So that's why I'm starting <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/radiatoryang" target="_blank">a new level design livestreaming show on Twitch called "Level With Me"</a>, riffing off <a href="http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/search/label/level%20with%20me" target="_blank">the original interview series I did for Rock Paper Shotgun</a>.<br /><br />Every Wednesday at 6 PM EST (3 PM PST, 11 PM GMT) I'm going to play some kind of level design-y game (usually a first person game) and offer a bunch of commentary on the environment art, the floorplan, the lighting, etc. and hopefully it'll be interesting to watch. Eventually, I might even host guests, or do some level design during the broadcast, etc.<br /><br /><i>(At some point, I also might start doing a show about sex games, but that won't be until after I figure out how to do this whole streaming thing.)&nbsp;</i><br /><br />Anyway, come tune-in at <a href="http://twitch.tv/radiatoryang">twitch.tv/radiatoryang</a>!Robert Yanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05595128450637115574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1130622109425093301.post-29061000884730078202016-11-23T15:07:00.002-05:002016-11-23T19:47:26.014-05:00Please nominate Radiator 2 for the "Whoaaaaaa Dude" category for the first annual Steam Awards!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/385370" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="100" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eRNFsF_qF1s/WDX2m7wFGxI/AAAAAAAAFNc/MLFjas7tnQYf7LDwaDsslKronTv6hKKygCLcB/s640/radiator2_steam_nominate.gif" width="540" /></a></div><br />Hello everyone! If you enjoy pointless exercises of internet democracy, as well as artistic depictions of male sexuality, then please consider nominating Radiator 2 for the "Whoaaaaaaa Dude" category for the first ever annual Steam Awards! <br /><br />To nominate Radiator 2, simply visit <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/385370" target="_blank">the Radiator 2 Steam store page</a> and log in to your Steam account. Once you're logged in, just click the big purple box button below the video embed, and select the "Whoaaaaaaaa Dude" category. <br /><br />Thanks everyone for your support! Tell your friends! <strike>Let's make Steam sexy again!</strike> Resist capitalism!Robert Yanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05595128450637115574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1130622109425093301.post-24370705740428691492016-11-07T19:41:00.000-05:002016-11-08T00:22:09.909-05:00For better or worseWhen I do the occasional interview about <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/385370/" target="_blank">all the gay shit I do</a>, I'm often asked, <b>"are games getting better?"</b> What they mean is whether the game industry <i>as a whole</i> is getting more inclusive, more diverse, more tolerant, more progressive, more whatever.<br /><br />My standard response used to be "a little", then it was "this is a bad question", but these days I'm leaning toward "no, but hopefully it won't matter."<br /><br />Some journalists hope I'll hand them a nice optimistic little quote to end their article, so that I can resolve their nagging fear that video games will never actually grow up. If you buy that next Halo game and (gasp) enjoy playing it, then are you part of "the problem"? And if you are, hopefully you just have to say 5 Hail Marys and donate to 5 queer people of color Patreons to be forgiven, and that means the numbers are getting better.<br /><br />My gay sex games are <b><i>not</i></b> some sort of statistical outlier that magically increases the arithmetic average gayness of all video games ever made. Even gay initiatives like&nbsp;<a href="http://www.glaad.org/sri/2016" target="_blank">GLAAD's"studio responsibility" scorecards</a> fall into the same trap -- the idea that culture is a type of math, and as long as the grades are getting better, then we can rest easy with this misleading summary of how people supposedly feel.<br /><a name='more'></a><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Uh1QqPADdsE/WCEYKooMNFI/AAAAAAAAFM4/HZXJ-bB6QrYDlOgO9h1glynzaMkjf83WQCLcB/s1600/betterOrWorse.jpg" /></div><br />Steam won't sell Ladykiller In A Bind and refuses to be clear about its content guidelines, but hey, at least Battlefield 1's single-player campaign has a black guy and an Arab woman in it!... ok, now ask yourself this supposedly important and relevant question, "are games getting better?"<br /><br />I feel that question is asked more often for the benefit of protecting games from criticism ("it's getting better, ok? relax!") and performing a love of games, rather than genuinely reforming games in any meaningful way.<br /><br />It is a totally toothless kind of intersectionality. Instead of linking together different systemic problems to take comprehensive action, we just add together all these "gains and losses" from all these disparate cases so that we can dissolve dissonance about our overall media consumption -- as if this was all about whether Ta-Nehisi Coates approves of you watching Game of Thrones as long as you watch Steven Universe too?<br /><br />As a gay artist, I have to confess, <i>I don't care which comic book movies you watch.</i>&nbsp;But when my own work gets assimilated into this giant festering ham of All Video Game Culture, and I'm weaponized as an example of how everything is getting better, then I can't help but feel a bit silly for doing all this. (Gay sex in games??? Gee, what will the game industry think of next!!)<br /><br />I also can't help but come to the same conclusions that a lot of people formerly-working-in-games have also come to, which is this: <b>games are capable of so much beauty and meaning, but this culture is also irrevocably <a href="http://www.magicalwasteland.com/notes/2014/8/22/the-king-and-his-objects" target="_blank">cursed</a> and <a href="http://www.somethingawful.com/news/movie-game-review/" target="_blank">haunted</a> by a permanent fixation on quantifying itself <a href="http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-11-07-video-games-are-boring" target="_blank">without ever criticizing itself</a>, and maybe it's time to figure something else out.</b><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-J8ObUVGyJfU/WBd7IdRpvWI/AAAAAAAAFMk/avXXP8ILBDsHW6L7-52m-ggC6QmAehSngCLcB/s1600/silenthill2_hell.gif" /></div><br />All of us misfits who keep hoping games culture will change and get better -- artists, critics, theorists, weirdos -- we're way too late. It's been like this for a while, and it's probably always going to be like this.<br /><br />To be clear, I'm not quitting game development anytime soon. The people I've met, and meaningful connections I've made, are one of the few reasons why I keep going!<br /><br />But I'm also coming to terms with my suspicion that this <strike>30</strike> <strike>40</strike> <a href="https://wearethemutants.com/2016/09/21/spacewar-and-the-birth-of-video-games/" target="_blank">54</a>-something year old "young medium" will never change and never "grow up" and never be what I hope it will be, and I'll try to perform that disappointment like an increasingly distant aunt who slowly drifts out of her relatives' lives. It's time to start thinking about where I should start re-directing a lot of my energy.<br /><br />One possible candidate is this thing called "virtual reality," which has proven remarkably resistant to monetization and/or dignity. The root of my cautious hope is based less in the hyperbolic promises of "VR evangelists", and based more in the possibility of a second chance with this media culture:<br /><br />What if we weren't too late with game culture, what if weirdos had a seat at the table from the beginning? What if we didn't let capitalism shit the bed so badly? What if artists and theorists were there, from its early days, to help guide popular understanding of it? <a href="http://www.polygon.com/2016/11/4/13507754/project-syria-steam" target="_blank">Or is it already too late for VR</a>? Is this all going to be a colossal waste of time? I think I'm going to try to find out.<br /><br />I'm not saying "everyone should quit video games and go into virtual reality" -- but this is just the transition I'm starting to take with my own work, personally, and I feel like maybe a lot of video game weirdos would be better off with transitioning into different fields themselves too.<br /><br />Because games probably aren't going to get better. They're like this, and they're going to be like this for a long time, or even forever. And we don't have to accept it or encourage it, but all of us have better things to do than to punch a brick wall over and over.<br /><b><br /></b><i><b>Next time: Toward a progressive agenda and theory of VR, and how to save VR culture from games culture</b></i><br /><br /><i>* I hope this goes without saying, but by "game(s) culture", I mean PC and console "hardcore gamer" consumer culture... and not mobile games or tabletop games or gambling or sports.</i>Robert Yanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05595128450637115574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1130622109425093301.post-87008412272031526242016-10-25T11:00:00.000-04:002016-10-25T11:00:00.190-04:00Games exhibitions and talks in NYC and Vancouver, Oct 28 - Nov 2<i>My new year's resolution for 2016 was to do fewer events and focus more on finishing my projects... so I guess that's why I'm doing 4 different events across 2 different cities over the next week or so:</i><br /><br />On Friday night (October 28), we're running <a href="http://gamecenter.nyu.edu/event/2016-no-quarter-exhibition/" target="_blank">the 7th annual No Quarter exhibition</a>, NYU Game Center's free video game party that I curate. The RSVP list just got a few more open slots added, but if you don't register in time, you can always arrive on the tail-end (at like 10-11pm) and hopefully it'll clear up by then. <i>(Free, RSVP required.)</i><br /><br />On Saturday night (October 29) the night after, I'll be doing a quick casual artist talk at <a href="http://lamama.org/artcade_2016/" target="_blank">ArtCade Con</a>, an independent game festival around the East Village in NYC. There'll be lots of cool great games there, some of them fresh from a tour at Fantastic Arcade, so it should be a pretty exciting night. <i>($5-$16, use promo code 'PANELS' to get 2 for $20)</i><br /><br />Then the week after, I fly to Vancouver for, like, one and a half days. It's a very brief whirlwind visit, unfortunately.<br /><br />That Wednesday (November 2nd) I'll be giving a talk <a href="http://grsj.arts.ubc.ca/events/event/you-can-have-gay-sex-in-video-games-and-eat-it-too/" target="_blank">"You Can Have Gay Sex in Video Games And Eat It Too" as part of the UBC Noted Scholars Lecture Series</a> hosted by the Social Justice Institute. I'll be talking about how I view the problem / question of "sex games" in relation to wider video game culture -- like, in a sense, Overwatch is probably the most popular sex game ever made? What does that mean for how games approach sexuality? <i>(Free, RSVP recommended.)</i><br /><br />Later that same night, I'll be hanging out at cool hip Vancouver pop-up alt-arcade <a href="http://heartprojector.com/" target="_blank">Heart Projector</a>&nbsp;run by some fantastic alt-games folks, where I've curated a selection of games about "first person drifting". I'll also be on-hand to readily complain about Civilization 6, so I hope to see my Vancouver readers there? <i>(To be honest, I'm not actually sure where the exhibition is, but I guess <a href="http://heartprojector.com/" target="_blank">you should sign-up for their newsletter</a> to find out where and when the show is!)</i><br /><br />Phew. Busy busy busy. I'll make time for this urinal game after this week, I promise.Robert Yanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05595128450637115574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1130622109425093301.post-86745644049897698692016-10-11T20:55:00.000-04:002016-10-11T20:55:16.112-04:00Interview with Patricia Hernandez of Kotaku about video game urinals<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xfPbJ8exkrk/V_2JeeW51JI/AAAAAAAAFLQ/T6hFgsy2j2QyVBiAyYyJ3D3GgCeQprS9ACLcB/s640/urinal_kotaku.jpg" width="540" /></div><br /><a href="http://kotaku.com/erotic-gay-bar-game-will-let-players-get-sexy-in-the-ba-1787600975" target="_blank">I talked to Patricia Hernandez at Kotaku</a> for a bit about my upcoming urinal game, tentatively called "The Tearoom", so please check it out if you're interested. In the post, I talk about a lot of my process and thinking, and the politics I want to explore in the game.<br /><br />(Sorry for the sparse updates lately; I've been busy with traveling and work.)Robert Yanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05595128450637115574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1130622109425093301.post-66466326975083097832016-10-03T23:37:00.002-04:002016-10-03T23:37:28.263-04:00No Quarter 2016, October 28th in New York City<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-waCXVyVI3VE/V_MiHzLnBVI/AAAAAAAAFKg/BOu3me--jrs6gx1BZLZWAQRFZ1u5HUs_gCLcB/s1600/NOQUARTER_NYU_092616.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-waCXVyVI3VE/V_MiHzLnBVI/AAAAAAAAFKg/BOu3me--jrs6gx1BZLZWAQRFZ1u5HUs_gCLcB/s640/NOQUARTER_NYU_092616.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><br />I currently curate <a href="http://gamecenter.nyu.edu/events/no-quarter/" target="_blank">No Quarter</a>, an annual games exhibition sponsored by NYU Game Center. We basically pay 4 game designers to make whatever they want (and they keep ownership over whatever they make) and then fly them to New York City for a big fun party.<br /><br /><a href="http://gamecenter.nyu.edu/event/2016-no-quarter-exhibition/" target="_blank">This year</a> the party is in Bushwick, Brooklyn, the current street art capital of the city, and we've commissioned <a href="https://twitter.com/BlendoGames" target="_blank">Brendon Chung</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/hollygramazio" target="_blank">Holly Gramazio</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/cattsmall" target="_blank">Catt Small</a>, and <a href="https://twitter.com/stephen__clark" target="_blank">Stephen Clark</a> to make awesome games for us.<br /><br />It's going to be a fun night, I hope you can join us. Entry is free and open to the public, but <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-seventh-annual-no-quarter-exhibition-tickets-28340943525" target="_blank">RSVP</a> is required.Robert Yanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05595128450637115574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1130622109425093301.post-4671098306582001642016-09-21T13:29:00.002-04:002016-09-21T13:29:44.144-04:00The golden age of urinalsThis is work in progress on a new project branching off an existing project... it's probably a game about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruising_for_sex" target="_blank">cruising</a>. I wanted the bathroom to feel old, so I did some research on old vintage public bathrooms -- and the Hinsdale urinals are widely acknowledged to be the supreme "Cadillac of drop urinals" so here they are. The bathroom itself is inspired by the bathroom in Old Town Bar in Manhattan.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5FCzu_bflAw/V-LCULqIs2I/AAAAAAAAFJY/txvwBYfYcpgF0cg8AATrM-vM0xXt1Or8ACLcB/s1600/peek00.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="346" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5FCzu_bflAw/V-LCULqIs2I/AAAAAAAAFJY/txvwBYfYcpgF0cg8AATrM-vM0xXt1Or8ACLcB/s640/peek00.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dwFRB8CCZis/V-LCUGEkM7I/AAAAAAAAFJc/kd6qg9ltOSMVKORn1PCbUvjHn8LvyIr_QCLcB/s1600/peek01.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="462" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dwFRB8CCZis/V-LCUGEkM7I/AAAAAAAAFJc/kd6qg9ltOSMVKORn1PCbUvjHn8LvyIr_QCLcB/s640/peek01.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><a name='more'></a><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Qva9pKcdA2M/V-LCUAZ9B4I/AAAAAAAAFJg/5wEte81OKX0I9d1d2kJrsNPAGpWaoP4xACLcB/s1600/peek02.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="368" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Qva9pKcdA2M/V-LCUAZ9B4I/AAAAAAAAFJg/5wEte81OKX0I9d1d2kJrsNPAGpWaoP4xACLcB/s640/peek02.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kwsoqnKKQ6c/V-LCUXFkgRI/AAAAAAAAFJk/j2uRm2JSTOssSLMFuNYgphkFRL3EagwCgCLcB/s1600/peek03.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="324" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kwsoqnKKQ6c/V-LCUXFkgRI/AAAAAAAAFJk/j2uRm2JSTOssSLMFuNYgphkFRL3EagwCgCLcB/s640/peek03.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SKydQPwnQjk/V-LCUoDG2OI/AAAAAAAAFJo/RGVCv9heG_c9P_m_j23_hMTF9DVNj2-WwCLcB/s1600/peek04.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="330" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SKydQPwnQjk/V-LCUoDG2OI/AAAAAAAAFJo/RGVCv9heG_c9P_m_j23_hMTF9DVNj2-WwCLcB/s640/peek04.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sjIhzcfFM2Q/V-LCUlvZRcI/AAAAAAAAFJs/NfHct3paU34poYLTuqS6CN3ci6dNTPhgACLcB/s1600/peek04b.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="354" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sjIhzcfFM2Q/V-LCUlvZRcI/AAAAAAAAFJs/NfHct3paU34poYLTuqS6CN3ci6dNTPhgACLcB/s640/peek04b.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8TyaNXMVIDQ/V-LCUgTJbeI/AAAAAAAAFJw/MAoHFDe_dXAhV6XYUjK1-sNFDRqCRpxSQCLcB/s1600/peek04c.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="356" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8TyaNXMVIDQ/V-LCUgTJbeI/AAAAAAAAFJw/MAoHFDe_dXAhV6XYUjK1-sNFDRqCRpxSQCLcB/s640/peek04c.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />Robert Yanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05595128450637115574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1130622109425093301.post-16874056052602485832016-09-12T01:08:00.000-04:002016-09-18T18:37:33.235-04:00No Stars, Only Constellations as slow magic (updated)<iframe frameborder="0" height="165" src="https://itch.io/embed/85030?linkback=true&amp;border_width=0&amp;bg_color=211f2e&amp;fg_color=ffffff&amp;link_color=a780e5&amp;border_color=4d4b5a" width="550"></iframe><br /><br /><i>NOTE: This post details my process and intent with the game <a href="https://radiatoryang.itch.io/nostars" target="_blank">No Stars Only Constellations</a>, and basically spoils the game. It is recommended that you play it first.</i><br /><br /><i><b>UPDATED, 18 September 2016: discusses <a href="http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2016/09/no-stars-only-constellations-as-slow.html#ending">the new ending</a>.</b></i><br /><br />No, it's not really a sex game. (Sorry.)<br /><br />Astute players may notice that No Stars, Only Constellations is a semi-remake of a previous game bundled in <a href="http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2015/10/radiator-1-notes-memories-and-regrets.html" target="_blank">Radiator 1</a>, called&nbsp;<a href="http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/search/label/polaris" target="_blank">Polaris</a>. Much of the initial premise remains the same: the player character is reluctantly on some sort of date with some dude, who implicitly demands that you pay attention to his stargazing story. At the end, he basically leaves you.<br /><br />The games also make similar points about stargazing: yes it's kinda romantic sometimes, but also, it's kinda bullshit. There's a certain fantasy of stargazing (and space) that, I think, almost never withstands any scrutiny. Maybe it's a metaphor for certain relationships?...<br /><a name='more'></a><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TRxEVK1aiLE/V9YxeerlZvI/AAAAAAAAFIg/pKi66k8jRGAsDCbkAQwPAY8_2zJjm38VwCLcB/s1600/nostars02a.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TRxEVK1aiLE/V9YxeerlZvI/AAAAAAAAFIg/pKi66k8jRGAsDCbkAQwPAY8_2zJjm38VwCLcB/s640/nostars02a.jpg" width="540" /></a></div><br />Originally, work on this remake version began (and was suspended) back in 2013. I paused development because I wasn't really happy with remaking the original game's puzzles and activities: trying to pick out a specific constellation from a giant noisy field of random stars, with relatively little help or forgiveness. The original game hinged on whether you remembered the trick of how to locate North by finding the North Star (Polaris) by following the direction of the Big Dipper, which is a real-life navigational aid you can use throughout most of the Northern Hemisphere. I liked the idea of teaching something real in a video game, but now, this trick felt a little worn-out.<br /><br />With the announcement of a&nbsp;<a href="https://itch.io/jam/fermi-paradox-jam" target="_blank">Fermi Paradox Jam</a>, I thought it would be a great opportunity to challenge myself to fix up the game, and so I worked over the past week or two to try to finish it somehow.<br /><br />My first step was to try to prototype a new stargazing interaction. Maybe something less about figuring out a puzzle, in favor of something more expressive and free-form. The initial prototype involved constructing your own "constellations" of words, to project your own ideas and associations on the stars. It looked like this:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3vjoPvPYT2Y/V9Y0Zu_aRnI/AAAAAAAAFI4/ac00XfpuKEcD8aRJleBpN-jxU3SHijuiQCLcB/s1600/nostars01.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3vjoPvPYT2Y/V9Y0Zu_aRnI/AAAAAAAAFI4/ac00XfpuKEcD8aRJleBpN-jxU3SHijuiQCLcB/s640/nostars01.jpg" width="540" /></a></div><br />The funny part would've involved pairing sex words ("Mike fucked the shit out of...") with science words ("... a Kardashev Type II alien civilization"), and it was a little amusing, but I felt like it couldn't really support more than a minute or two of sustained interaction. I needed it to last for at least 5 minutes!<br /><br />Despite the failed design experiment, No Stars is still not a memorization puzzle game. It ended up being more like a simple guided tour of the night sky. Your goal is still to look at stuff based on narrative cues, but the game is very forgiving about letting you aimlessly scan the sky by brute force in order to progress. Because the game is now so easy, I was able to omit a hint function and I didn't have to do any difficulty tuning.<br /><br />Most of the heavy-lifting in this game (i.e. what's maybe most interesting about it) is the ancient constellation sky effect, which selectively overlays an old Renaissance star chart over the night sky, like a giant roving magnifying glass. The overlay always moves toward wherever you are looking, but it moves slowly, which hopefully encourages players to direct their gaze slowly so that it doesn't lag too far behind.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VzHK9RkNe3w/V9YyJfI66TI/AAAAAAAAFIk/R-SqxRMhV6kc6OnWi55KGXyaGcJGEXQMACLcB/s1600/nostars02c.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VzHK9RkNe3w/V9YyJfI66TI/AAAAAAAAFIk/R-SqxRMhV6kc6OnWi55KGXyaGcJGEXQMACLcB/s640/nostars02c.jpg" width="540" /></a></div><br />In the middle of the game, Greek columns also slowly rise along the edges of the forest. They move so slowly that most players do not notice them at first, if ever. My goal was for players to pay deep attention to the stars, but then suddenly notice these ruins around them. Were those pillars always there? What do we notice, and what do we ignore?<br /><br />It is all supposed to feel a bit like magic, but a slow kind of old magic.<br /><br />The study of space is one of the oldest forms of magic ever practiced.<br /><br />Civilizations have been telling stories about the sky for thousands of years, and maybe the Fermi Paradox is just the newest type of constellation, the latest useful idea to help us decide which stars to notice and which to ignore.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gyzas5jffJI/V9YyQkyqWtI/AAAAAAAAFIo/i4BMxbVaPoErxYTXrJzreTw-Z-2wXAsIQCLcB/s1600/nostars02d.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gyzas5jffJI/V9YyQkyqWtI/AAAAAAAAFIo/i4BMxbVaPoErxYTXrJzreTw-Z-2wXAsIQCLcB/s640/nostars02d.jpg" width="540" /></a></div><br />The game ends with your boyfriend saying he has to go pee, and then leaving. When will he return? Will you wait for him, or will you quit the game? <strike>(In future updates, I want to add a 50% random chance for your boyfriend to come back from peeing in the woods. Unfortunately, I didn't get around to it for this game jam.)</strike><br /><br />I wanted to end the game with a mild dilemma reminiscent of the sci-fi film <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(1997_American_film)" target="_blank">Contact</a>, which is about how science itself cannot prove that science is important -- science requires deep belief to justify itself as a value system. How do you keep hope alive? I wanted much lower and more personal stakes here, so the problem at the end is more about your faith in this video game. The core question is basically the same, <i>"is there something there, or am I wasting my time trying to find out?</i>" I'm sure we've all had relationships like that.<br /><br />I also thought it was important for the boyfriend <i id="ending">to literally get up and walk away</i> because, well, most players don't really expect him to actually change or do something.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-p6mn7_Isk-c/V98NQtdzgKI/AAAAAAAAFJI/OTQ_j1Nipdskizelm8M0pNJfmU5aXwFHwCLcB/s1600/nostars03.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-p6mn7_Isk-c/V98NQtdzgKI/AAAAAAAAFJI/OTQ_j1Nipdskizelm8M0pNJfmU5aXwFHwCLcB/s640/nostars03.jpg" width="540" /></a></div><br />Gamers who play a lot of AAA games are probably familiar with "prop NPCs" -- tertiary static "extra" characters who exist in the game world just to decorate it, like a picture hanging on a wall, or a door that never opens. These characters just loop through the same pose, forever, and rarely do anything of importance. I wanted players to think he was one of those types of game entities, so that players would basically write him off and take him for granted. (Which is maybe what the player character was doing too, emotionally.)<br /><br />So when he abruptly leaves, claiming that he has to pee, hopefully it's a bit shocking. He's been directing the gameplay and narrative this whole time. What's left if he leaves?<br /><br />The player must wait a random amount of time, anywhere from 6 to 12 minutes, before they get a 22% random chance for their boyfriend to return. (22% is the current estimated percentage of habitable planets.)<br /><br />Now, I expect most players to quit the game before then, instead of waiting for all that time for a ~1/4 chance to see him again. But for those who are willing to wait with uncertainty for those 6-12 uncomfortable minutes, I introduced a new endgame mechanic where you will fall asleep after 30 seconds of inactivity, which means you must periodically move your head a bit and pay attention, or risk falling asleep. If you fall asleep, you automatically quit the game and lose your chance at seeing him.<br /><br />This "screensaver"-like system is intended mainly to frustrate achievement hunter players for a future Steam release, so that they cannot simply leave their computer unattended for a 22% chance of earning the achievement. If players want to "commit" within this game system, then I want players to actively wait, to really feel the passage of time.<br /><br />Because if stars are an ancient form of slow magic, then maybe so are relationships.<br /><br /><i>"No Stars Only Constellations" was a phrase written on the whiteboard in the office of NYU Game Center director Frank Lantz. I don't really know why he wrote it, or if he heard it from someone else, but I'm hereby claiming it for this project. Thanks in advance, Frank!!</i>Robert Yanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05595128450637115574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1130622109425093301.post-41001581720564443622016-09-10T16:20:00.000-04:002016-09-10T17:43:52.990-04:00Forever BUTT<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0Heq9CSvcZQ/V9Rj_rrKFwI/AAAAAAAAFIQ/BFsU81qZyEwnsHM_HNemYt4xhiLq6A6nwCLcB/s1600/butt_magazine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0Heq9CSvcZQ/V9Rj_rrKFwI/AAAAAAAAFIQ/BFsU81qZyEwnsHM_HNemYt4xhiLq6A6nwCLcB/s320/butt_magazine.jpg" width="225" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The cover of BUTT Magazine #18</td></tr></tbody></table>This doesn't really have anything to do with games, directly, but: I want to talk briefly about a gay mens' magazine called <a href="http://www.buttmagazine.com/" target="_blank">BUTT</a>.<br /><br />I never realized before how BUTT was such an important influence to me, until a photographer asked me to pick out things from my apartment that informed my work -- so I picked out <a href="https://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/sex/all/04614/facts.forever_butt.htm" target="_blank">"Forever BUTT"</a>, a best-of compilation book. At first I thought about how funny it would be if the word "BUTT" was literally printed in the photo, but then I realized there was some truth to what BUTT meant to me.<br /><br />Growing up, my early understanding of gay men consisted mostly of hiding random gay crypto-porn, talking with my mom's fitness instructor, and wondering about Tigger from Winnie The Pooh. I knew abstractly about AIDS, hate crimes, gay bars, musical theater, and mid-century modern art, but I didn't really connect any of those things to my life. All I knew was that I wish Zangief played more like Chun-Li.<br /><br />And then one fateful day, while walking into an American Apparel store without any intent to ever buy anything, I saw the cover of <a href="http://www.buttmagazine.com/magazine/library/butt-18/" target="_blank">BUTT issue #18</a> on the shelf -- a casual portrait of a smirking burly bearded dude printed on milky fuchsia-pink paper. He wasn't a glossy supermodel with perfect cheekbones, he was just some random cute guy somewhere, and so he deserved to be on the cover. It all seemed clearly gay, yet also didn't really fit my young idea of gayness at all.<br /><br />What... was this... ?<br /><a name='more'></a><br />BUTT offered me (and countless other gay dudes) a very different idea of what it meant to be a gay man. This was a gayness that was not-American and American. Gay was dirty, clean, horny, sexless, white, black, young, old, hairy, smooth, chubby, skinny, urban, rural, daddy, twink -- and most importantly, pink -- all at the same time. (Society's current obsession with daddies, and the 2015 trend with beards? As with many things, gay culture was already doing it decades ago.)<br /><br />In brave pursuit of that mission, they photographed and interviewed countless gay activists, artists, authors, event organizers, musicians, gay twins, designers, filmmakers, porn stars, sex workers, parents, even transwomen... each issue helped me develop a genuine sense of unity and continuity within gay history, to counter my typical cynical teenage nihilism at the time. Grouping everyone together, famous and totally unknown, also implied that all this history was still happening today, and that I could be part of this long tradition of thought and feeling.<br /><br />I could feel it from the first time I saw that big thick beautiful logo: BUTT. It was radically horny and loved itself for it. &nbsp;I often feel like straight people "tolerate" gay people only in abstract, as long as gay people don't actually talk about the actual mechanics of gay sex or relationships -- and here was a magazine that talked about sex in very frank and playful terms, with no shame nor apology. I now recognize that much of my recent gay sex games' tone and approach to sex comes from reading BUTT.<br /><br />Through those pink pages, gay men and gay culture became real to me. Compared to the ahistorical sexless pandering bullshit that was the popular mainstream US TV sitcom <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_%26_Grace" target="_blank">Will And Grace</a>, BUTT Magazine felt so fresh and important and honest.<br /><br />Today, BUTT has long ceased its print run and exists more as a website, but it managed to inspire a great number of successors. My favorite "child of BUTT" at the moment is <a href="http://gayletter.com/" target="_blank">Gayletter</a>, which has a local focus on the gay party circuit in New York City, but also does photographs and interviews and editorials.Robert Yanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05595128450637115574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1130622109425093301.post-41298424641963964532016-08-13T14:41:00.002-04:002016-08-13T14:47:11.490-04:00Radiator World* Tour, Fall 2016 ScheduleThis upcoming year I'm trying to attend more events and to go places where I haven't before. I'll sadly be missing IndieCade West and also probably GDC 2017! But in exchange, I'm mixing up my usual routine a bit.<br /><br />Here's my current schedule for this season:<br /><ul><li><b><a href="http://www.livingroomlightexchange.com/lrlxny/" target="_blank">Living Room Light Exchange</a>, September 13 in Brooklyn, NY</b>. I'll be speaking at this contemporary pop-up salon series, which totally takes place in actual real living rooms around the city. It's been long popular in the Bay Area, but this will be its first time in New York City, and I'm honored to help launch it. <i>(Free, RSVP required)</i></li><li><b><a href="http://artandcode.com/weirdreality/" target="_blank">Weird Reality: Head-Mounted Art &amp;&amp; Code</a>, October 6-9 in Pittsburgh, PA</b>. Me and a bunch of other people are cautiously optimistic about virtual reality -- well, as long as capitalism doesn't fuck it all up -- and I'll be presenting some of my work at this CMU conference as well as mingling with fellow weirdos. <i>(Not free, tickets required. Some travel scholarships and subsidized tickets available, ask me about them if you're interested.)</i></li><li><b><a href="http://steamcommunity.com/devdays" target="_blank">Steam Dev Days</a>, October 12-13 in Seattle, WA</b>. I don't really know why I'm going to this, to be honest, considering how uncommercial my games are?... but I hear good things about the signal-to-noise ratio here (no press are allowed and all convos are understood to be off-record) and I'm curious to know what Valve's VR plans are. <i>(Not free, developers only.)</i></li><li><b><a href="http://gamecenter.nyu.edu/events/no-quarter/" target="_blank">No Quarter 2016</a>, October __ in Brooklyn, NY</b>. I curate NYU Game Center's long-running annual tradition where we commission original new "public games" from rising and veteran developers, and then throw them a big fun party. We haven't actually announced the date yet, but stay tuned for more specifics soon. <i>(Free, RSVP required)</i></li><li><b><a href="http://grsj.arts.ubc.ca/" target="_blank">Noted Scholars Lecture Series</a>, November 2 in Vancouver, BC</b>. The Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia kindly invited me to speak as part of their lecture series. I'm a bit intimidated because I don't consider myself a hardcore theorist academic. I'm probably less well-read than most of their undergraduate students! But anyway, my talk is tentatively titled "You Can Have Gay Sex in Video Games and Eat It Too", and I'll try to be more sex theory oriented vs game design oriented. <i>(Free, RSVP required)</i></li></ul>If you'll be at one or more of these events, feel free to say hey to me.<br /><br /><i>* this season, "World Tour" means "North America Tour" I guess? but hey at least I leave the USA at some point, doesn't that count for something</i>Robert Yanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05595128450637115574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1130622109425093301.post-61965267588373022652016-07-17T14:53:00.002-04:002016-07-17T14:56:43.934-04:00Finishing Moses<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fdOyFMnhKXk/V4vQXjSQNoI/AAAAAAAAFGU/o7mydes2XugbJl5EY-J701gcPielbjczwCLcB/s1600/moses09.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fdOyFMnhKXk/V4vQXjSQNoI/AAAAAAAAFGU/o7mydes2XugbJl5EY-J701gcPielbjczwCLcB/s640/moses09.jpg" width="540" /></a></div><br />Me and <a href="https://twitter.com/eddiecameron" target="_blank">Eddie</a> now have 12 days (less than 2 weeks!) to complete this Robert Moses city game, so we're now transitioning into a late stage production mode: we're cutting systems and content we won't be able to complete, and trying to finalize the stuff we already have. We're cutting the park-building system to focus on the highway-building system, and we're trying to do a lot of mission design.<br /><br />The finished prototype we're aiming to deliver will be kind of a "vertical slice" of an Act 2 of a larger game, and will represent Robert Moses' career from around 1934-1936 -- from when he is appointed as the first city-wide parks commissioner, to when he completes the West Side Highway and Henry Hudson Bridge. We're putting a lot of work into interpreting the "spirit" of Robert Caro's book The Power Broker as a very specific and detailed-oriented historical work; the in-game city must reflect the New York City of 1934, with historical streets and district names, and the mechanics must also reflect Robert Moses' real-life historical tendencies.<br /><a name='more'></a><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RS6BxIcHvYM/V4vRXH95lAI/AAAAAAAAFGg/LolLU7s1N303XJOWdzP5SCvHO36dn6ulwCLcB/s1600/moses08.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="196" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RS6BxIcHvYM/V4vRXH95lAI/AAAAAAAAFGg/LolLU7s1N303XJOWdzP5SCvHO36dn6ulwCLcB/s200/moses08.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Caro argues this phase is when Moses cements some of his most important strategies: the use of a public authority to act beyond government oversight, the use of bridges as "traffic machines" to earn tolls and capitalize bonds to fund more works -- and the use of immense public support to defend himself from investigations, the city government, and even the president.<br /><br />This phase ends when Moses finally achieves his decades-long dream of building the West Side Highway / Riverside Park / Henry Hudson Bridge. (What happens after Moses accomplishes his dream? You'll have to play Act 3, when or if we make it.)<br /><br />But there's a few game dynamics (inspired by Moses) that we have to try to hit upon before the player reaches that end point:<br /><ul><li>Player should multi-task constantly: set a destination for your driver, then spend the time reading memos and looking for projects.</li><li>Power means doing lots of these seemingly small unrelated things, all the time, and foreseeing how they add up or connect later.</li><li>With enough power, you stop caring about small things, and become interested more in doing bigger things. Hopefully the small things paid off by now.</li><li>In the early to mid game, you're heavily reliant on the mayor and the federal government for money, which requires power. In the end game, your bridge now earns you money (and also makes travel much easier) thus making you completely independent of them.</li></ul><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-r9ZVjhBxDiA/V4vRmkIMlqI/AAAAAAAAFGk/1Pel07h9AJ45dysBdMeIIXAZwO9R4HB0ACLcB/s1600/moses_triborough4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-r9ZVjhBxDiA/V4vRmkIMlqI/AAAAAAAAFGk/1Pel07h9AJ45dysBdMeIIXAZwO9R4HB0ACLcB/s640/moses_triborough4.jpg" width="540" /></a></div><br />At some point in the game, we need to address <b>Moses' failed 1934 run for Governor</b>. Caro uses this moment to setup three important ideas: (a) Moses' platform was heavily against the New Deal even though he profited the most from it, which was a strong basis for Franklin Delano Roosevelt's (FDR) grudge against him. (b) Moses needed more executive power, which he would later get through the Authority instead. (c) Moses wasn't actually that popular or charismatic in the end, so he learned to bypass elections by forcing mayors to re-appoint him instead.<br /><br />The big turning point / test of the player's power will involve <b>PWA Order 129</b>. This was a secret order where FDR basically threatened to withhold all federal public works funds from New York City unless Moses was removed from the epic Triborough Bridge project... so Moses leaked the order as federal meddling and won public support, and FDR had to back down. That's how powerful and savvy Moses became: he outsmarted one of the most powerful presidents in US history, and was already subverting the traditional dynamic between city and federal government.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HytPtQBBKUw/V4vSUgszeBI/AAAAAAAAFGs/zOQcPQCBpsc1T46NVcW62hqNLCwEj6WkQCLcB/s1600/moses10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="318" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HytPtQBBKUw/V4vSUgszeBI/AAAAAAAAFGs/zOQcPQCBpsc1T46NVcW62hqNLCwEj6WkQCLcB/s640/moses10.jpg" width="540" /></a></div><br />The funny thing about designing this game is that many of our intended play patterns practically designed themselves. Existing genre conventions in video games already lend themselves to the story of Moses' ruthless rise to power, from gamers' tendencies to reason "purely" in terms of costs and benefits, as well as deeply-ingrained ideas about player convenience and implicit ownership of a game world. Video games' traditional focus on exploitation and optimization already provide the emotional vocabulary we need, we just need to draw a little attention to it.<br /><br />In many ways, SimCity is already a Robert Moses simulator. It is the fantasy of a city without an elected government -- only an appointed omnipotent authority.<br /><br />With this game, we want to show where SimCity comes from, to situate it within the real-world history of a place and real-world life of the most influential urban planner of the modern era. If SimCity were a game with a narrative arc, this would be one of the most important narratives to tell with it.<br /><br />Wish us luck!Robert Yanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05595128450637115574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1130622109425093301.post-77786413967252224212016-07-11T10:57:00.003-04:002016-07-14T14:54:37.207-04:00Why I am one of the most banned game developers from Twitch, and 3 steps they can take to fix their broken policy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KRj3Z3P_0vw/V4LffY7wQWI/AAAAAAAAFGA/E-eyC7VZWqkW45WM5T4hJt5v2okd9-BSQCLcB/s1600/twitch_prohibitedgames.png" /></div><br /><i>EDIT, 14 July 2016: this original post has been <a href="http://www.polygon.com/2016/7/14/12187898/banned-on-twitch" target="_blank">cross-posted</a> (with a few additional excerpts, for context) to Polygon.</i><br /><br />A few days ago, <a href="http://help.twitch.tv/customer/portal/articles/1992676-list-of-prohibited-games" target="_blank">Twitch banned</a> my newest release <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/385370/" target="_blank">Radiator 2</a> from all broadcast by anyone throughout their entire site. This is the third release of mine that they've banned. I am now the 3rd most banned game developer from Twitch (or perhaps the 2nd most banned, if you count each part of Radiator 2 separately).<br /><br /><a href="http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2015/09/on-my-games-being-twice-banned-by-twitch.html" target="_blank">I'm no stranger to Twitch game bans</a>, but this is new even for me: the games bundled in Radiator 2 are actually kinda old! For the past year and a half of press coverage, interviews, game festivals, art exhibitions, and viral videos, these games were OK to broadcast on Twitch. I had thought I found a safe ground of "acceptable sexuality" (an extremely dangerous concept in of itself) but with this move, they've now banned basically everything I've made. Now, nowhere is safe for me as a creator.<br /><br />What's too gay for them, what's too sexual for them? Why did they change their mind when I re-mastered my games and put them on Steam?<br /><br />I have no idea, and that's the biggest problem: Twitch never says anything. No e-mail, no notification, no rationale, no reason, no pity tweet. Am I just supposed to keep refreshing the ban list page to see if they banned me, for every single game I make, forever?<br /><br />This is humiliating and dehumanizing treatment, and I wish Twitch would stop it.<br /><a name='more'></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;">* * *</div><br />Previously, I critiqued Twitch's ban policy in <a href="http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2016/03/the-game-industry-needs-to-get-laid-and.html" target="_blank">my talk at GDC 2016</a>. Their policy, I argue,&nbsp;mimics the <a href="https://www.engadget.com/2015/12/02/paypal-square-and-big-bankings-war-on-the-sex-industry/" target="_blank">anti-sex strategies of banks and payment processors</a>. Their goal is to remain vague and hazy, so that they can randomly decide what "too much sex" or the "wrong kind of sex" is, while carving out special exceptions for large companies or business partners. I'm sure this is good for business, but it's very bad for creative culture.<br /><br />Maybe Twitch simply wants to "protect the children", so that's why they ban my games? That must be why they allow broadcast of countless M-rated games, games like The Witcher 3 -- which hinges its brand on its sexually-charged dark edgy fantasy politics, and even makes players <a href="https://youtu.be/VOwBUVcnAIw?t=1h4m55s" target="_blank">walk through a house decorated with murdered raped women as the climax of an important quest</a>. "Protecting the children" must also mean letting users broadcast South Park: Stick of Truth, a game with a brand that exists to court controversy and delight in offensive imagery, a game which makes you fight a giant penis boss monster and depicts aliens graphically probing various characters.<br /><br />While I find both games to be distasteful (and lazy) about how they depict sex and sexual violence, I am glad that Twitch does not ban these games to "protect the children". Here, Twitch seems to understand that this is a job better suited for&nbsp;their&nbsp;<i>already-existing </i><a href="http://help.twitch.tv/customer/portal/articles/1607357-twitch-account-settings#channelandvideos" target="_blank">"Mature Content" user setting</a>, giving users more control over managing their own experience.<br /><br />I just wish Twitch was nearly as understanding about my games too.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">* * *</div><br />Maybe I'm being too cynical. Maybe a large committee of smart people at Twitch carefully debate the aesthetic merits of each game, before taking the nuclear step of unilaterally banning it from one of the most important game platforms in the world?<br /><br />If this is the case, then I would really appreciate <b>these following common sense reforms to the Twitch game ban policy</b>&nbsp;in favor of bringing greater transparency and humanity to their ban process<b>.&nbsp;</b><i>(NOTE: I consider these&nbsp;suggestions to be "cheap" operational changes which would not require major technical changes. Thus, they are just a starting point toward a better solution.)</i><br /><br /><b><u>1. Notify game creators when banning their work, and cite specific game features or content for why they were banned</u></b>. The reasoning should be listed in a notification e-mail as well as on the banned game list. A ban is punishment for something, and Twitch needs to tell creators how to avoid that punishment in the future -- unless the real message is that the punishment is arbitrary, or that nothing we do will ever avoid punishment. This is the absolute bare minimum that Twitch should do. Even faceless regulatory boards like the ESRB and MPAA explain their ratings.<br /><u><br /></u> <b><u>2. Publish and operate a formal appeals process</u>.</b> If a creator thinks Twitch got it wrong, who do they even talk to? Currently, the ban list page implies that there is no possible appeal. The decision to ban a game <i>from one of the largest game culture platforms in the world</i> should be able to withstand scrutiny and discussion, and an appeals process would give creators confidence that the ban decision was not taken lightly or made on a whim. Even a failed appeal, as much as I would disagree with it, would give me more information and demonstrate that Twitch cared a little about this, at least.<br /><br /><b><u>3. Maintain two classifications of games: Restricted Games and Prohibited Games</u></b>. Instead of inflicting one nuclear punishment upon all games with sexual content that aren't The Witcher 3 or South Park, Twitch could maintain a second categorization that includes <i>artistically-sexual games that don't function as pornography, </i>which&nbsp;is the "compromise" that YouTube and Vimeo make in their policies. I would argue that all of my games, as well as <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/432020/" target="_blank">What's Under Your Blanket?</a> (a teenage cartoon masturbation-embarrassment comedy game) and <a href="http://www.genitaljousting.com/" target="_blank">Genital Jousting</a> (a disembodied cartoon penis arena game) are all easily far too weird or self-conscious for most people to masturbate with. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)<br /><br />"Restricted Games" could require users to use the Mature Content flag -- <i><b>functionality that is already implemented in Twitch --</b></i>&nbsp;just as YouTube routinely gates my videos and Steam gates my store page. <b>For the record, I am completely OK with moderation and gating!</b> This is the norm on YouTube, Vimeo, Steam... similar functionality is already in Twitch... so why on earth would you rather&nbsp;<i>ban games by secret trial</i> instead of training your community to use this tool, and making it easier to use?<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">* * *</div><br />If games are a form of art and protected speech, <a href="http://kotaku.com/manifesto-the-21st-century-will-be-defined-by-games-1275355204" target="_blank">the great bold new artform of the 21st century</a>, then could we all please, at least, wring our hands a bit more about banning games?<br /><br />Do you know what offends me more than being banned? It's Twitch's cold shoulder attitude about banning everyone. If they were on a genuine anti-sex morality crusade, at least that would mean they cared about it. Instead, their silence and inconsistency just gives me the distinct impression of <i>not giving a shit, </i>which would be fine if only they weren't so important to the future of game culture.<br /><br />If Twitch actually cares about games, it should invest time / people / resources into <b>nurturing&nbsp;games as a <i>mature creative culture, </i>to&nbsp;protect whoever needs protection AS WELL AS protect creative diversity of expression at the same time</b>. These goals are not mutually exclusive, and if any system cannot do this, then that system is broken and should be fixed.<br /><br />Please fix this, Twitch.Robert Yanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05595128450637115574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1130622109425093301.post-6862002974706263352016-06-23T12:49:00.001-04:002016-06-23T12:59:41.740-04:00Radiator 2 reception and press round-upAs of June 23, a week since its release, <a href="http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2016/06/radiator-2-as-loud-and-quiet.html" target="_blank">Radiator 2</a>&nbsp;on <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/385370/">Steam</a> is rated "Very Positive" (85%) out of 595 user reviews, which seems pretty decent to me. The store page has gotten about 9,000,000 impressions (number of times someone has seen a link to the store page) and about 500,000 actual visits (when they actually click that link). (Moral: there is definitely an audience for gay stuff on Steam, let's put more gay stuff on there.)<br /><br />There have been about 34,000 downloads total, with a peak of 132 simultaneous players on the day after launch. 18% of downloads are from the United States, followed by 10% of downloads from Russia, 7% from China, 6% from Brazil, 6% from Germany, and 4% from France. (Moral: localize your game! A lot of the world doesn't use English!)<br /><br />As I've always said, numbers don't really mean much in the end, but I guess they're fun to think about. If I were selling this game for like ~$5 USD, those user numbers would've qualified as a respectable commercial indie effort that easily funds another project... But in terms of free games, many of which get hundreds of thousands of installs, Radiator 2 is more or less within the statistical median between "ultra obscure" and "viral", which I think isn't too bad for a 15 minute compilation of 1 year old gay sex games.<br /><br />Here are some quick write-ups at <a href="https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/06/16/radiator-2-steam-release-robert-yang/" target="_blank">Rock Paper Shotgun</a> and <a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-06-16-robert-yang-releases-remastered-hurt-me-plenty-succulent-and-stick-shift-on-steam" target="_blank">Eurogamer</a>, and here's <a href="http://steamed.kotaku.com/it-s-not-easy-putting-a-gay-sex-game-on-steam-1782457390" target="_blank">a more in-depth interview with Nathan Grayson for Kotaku</a>&nbsp;about more of the details behind putting and maintaining something on Steam.<br /><br />Now, what's next? As I told Nathan, I'm currently re-conceptualizing the gay bar game, and I'm also doing some more technical design work for <a href="http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2016/05/progress-report-moses.html" target="_blank">that Robert Moses game</a>, which will hopefully be done in late July.Robert Yanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05595128450637115574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1130622109425093301.post-80502181174533173112016-06-16T13:17:00.001-04:002016-06-16T18:20:44.819-04:00Radiator 2 as loud and quiet<iframe frameborder="0" height="173" src="https://itch.io/embed/68798?linkback=true&amp;border_width=4&amp;bg_color=551716&amp;fg_color=fbf4f4&amp;link_color=f8baba&amp;border_color=7f4140" width="558"></iframe><br /><br />Radiator 2 is an "HD remastered" (whatever that means) bundle consisting of previously released sex games <a href="https://radiatoryang.itch.io/hurt-me-plenty" target="_blank">Hurt Me Plenty</a>, <a href="https://radiatoryang.itch.io/succulent" target="_blank">Succulent</a>, and <a href="https://radiatoryang.itch.io/stick-shift" target="_blank">Stick Shift</a>, available on <a href="https://radiatoryang.itch.io/radiator2" target="_blank">Itch.IO</a> and <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/385370/" target="_blank">Steam</a>.<br /><i><br /></i><i>(If you're interested in knowing more about the process and intent behind the individual games, see <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0ihl0A8JH0" target="_blank">the Hurt Me Plenty talk I gave at NYU Poly</a>, or <a href="http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2015/01/succulent-as-hypnotizing-homo-hop-homage.html" target="_blank">the write-up I did about Succulent</a> or <a href="http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2015/04/stick-shift-as-activist-autoerotica.html" target="_blank">the write-up I did on Stick Shift</a>.)</i><br /><br />Originally, the plan was to package them together to avoid going through Steam Greenlight three whole separate times, but now I feel like they all function similarly and share code / assets, so why not put them together?<br /><br />I'm also concerned with accessibility and preservation. I want this game to function on a wide variety of systems, now and for a long time -- and Unity 5.4 finally fixed an OpenGL crash a lot of players have been reporting to me, so that's a big reason I've had to wait until June. The engine upgrade also brings better lighting and physically-based rendering, and I also added some language localization and gamepad support while I was at it. I'm now pretty comfortable with this being a "definitive version" that I don't have to worry about or maintain too much.<br /><br />There's also a lot more to this release, other than these boring technical details...<br /><br /><a name='more'></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2-VmX-M8Fpk/V2CGzHg3W-I/AAAAAAAAFEY/dh1vaiOzp_wAi1Dzwp0XAFl0rtPz_8kpQCLcB/s640/radiator2_stickshift-new-hd0.jpg" width="540" /></div><br />It's on Steam. There is still a silly faux-legitimacy of "being on Steam", which means that <i>Valve technically approved of you.&nbsp;</i>You can see this value system at work in the comments of many Steam users who get upset when certain games are allowed on Steam, and I have no doubt that some of them are going to show up on my store page as well... It just goes to show how much work we still have to do as a community.<br /><i><br /></i><i>(Note: this definitely isn't the only gay game on Steam -- Christine Love makes important space opera lesbian dramas like <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/209370/" target="_blank">Analogue: A Hate Story</a>, Luke Miller made the very cute and campy&nbsp;<a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/312970/" target="_blank">My Ex-Boyfriend the Space Tyrant</a>, and don't forget the very tragic emotional explore-em-up&nbsp;<a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/428540/" target="_blank">Fragments of Him</a> -- but we are definitely a very small minority on the platform.)</i><br /><br />I've said before <a href="http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2015/10/not-manifesto.html" target="_blank">that I don't really care whether people play these games or not (especially when I don't make any money from it) and what's more important to me is simply that they exist</a>. This is one of the primary tenets of the modern gay rights movement: that we must be visible and present, or else we will be erased. It's important that there's a gay sex game available on Steam, of all places, and that gesture is now part of the artistic meaning of this work.<br /><br />That isn't to say I'm abandoning Itch.IO though... Itch has been a wonderful service and platform for the past year or two, with their extremely inclusive content moderation policies and accessible tools. I remember when I first released Radiator 1 in 2008 -- <a href="https://hylobatidae.org/" target="_blank">Adam Foster</a> mirrored the mod files on his ingenious proto-cloud system, and <a href="http://blendogames.com/" target="_blank">Brendon Chung</a> graciously hosted my message board. I'm grateful that I don't have to leech off my friends with servers anymore. (And I'm sure they're grateful too.)<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ER1ljB0-7nI/V2CG8ERNt6I/AAAAAAAAFEg/taUt5RpT8X8_HARLUu9TfbxBnKd_pfQawCLcB/s640/radiator2_succulent-hd2.jpg" width="540" /></div><br />Throughout this period, Itch has been a very stable storefront that helped me reliably reach a huge (and extremely thirsty) audience that I never knew existed. I'm hesitant to label any of this as a "success" because it hasn't really led to financial independence or artistic sustainability, and I wouldn't recommend anyone copy my methods ("step 2: give away your games, don't get paid") unless they have a day job and partner with a day job. Also, I imagine some more successful game designers might scoff at these lifetime stats, but with all those caveats in mind -- personally I'm humbled and thankful for the response I've managed to get:<br /><ul><li>Hurt Me Plenty: 288,431 views; 51,958 downloads.</li><li>Succulent: 253,340 views; 34,954 downloads.</li><li>Stick Shift: 251,813 views; 48,175 downloads.</li></ul>That said, they're just numbers. If you've ever made anything that went "viral" then you know that it never really changes your life! You'll just wake up the next day and the internet will be moderately bored of you, and the only way you'll know is that some numbers are smaller. Easy come easy go.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MeS7irFf8Og/V2COmW4SR-I/AAAAAAAAFE0/xq4joue4B-YLpFNxudZSeIU1GMoCVBuPACLcB/s640/radiator2_hurtmeplenty-new-hd0.jpg" width="540" /></div><br />So instead, I often wonder whether I'm doing the "right thing" and whether I'm satisfied with my work. My games try very hard to co-opt popular AAA art styles and production values, but I've found that the winking often gets lost in play. For instance, one respected UK theater critic argued my games exemplified the worst tendencies of the commercial game industry. If my games can't speak to her, then who can they speak to? Maybe the trouble with sarcasm is that other people decide whether you're being sarcastic.<br /><br />However, I'm also afraid of over-correction, of explaining myself too much. Radiator 1 started as "art games for gamers", games that assume a lot of familiarity with games culture, and try to build on that as an artistic context.<br /><br />I've always been careful to keep my artist statements separate from the actual game experiences, because nothing kills a joke like explaining it. <i>(The annoying part: some YouTubers basically re-telling the joke in your game, and then they basically take credit for it. The absolute worst part: when they ruin the delivery or they don't even understand the joke! AHHH!!!)</i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Cscfmb472mk/V2COu5ulleI/AAAAAAAAFE8/VkdzWZR7JnItge7gXkTEamUFn3w-hOwnQCLcB/s640/radiator2_title_new-hair.jpg" width="540" /></div><br />So the one gesture I've allowed myself is the Radiator 2 menu screen. I needed some striking new imagery to act as the central "visual identity" for this release (sorry, I went to design school) so I built a new scene using leftover motel assets from an old prototype and then splayed my 3D hunk star on the bed. (The condoms in the lower-right mark an invisible button to play a 4 year-old unreleased game called <a href="http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/search/label/condomcorps" target="_blank">CondomCorps</a>.)<br /><br />The idea was that <a href="http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2014/03/get-better-soon-dev-diary-2-character.html" target="_blank">the hunk</a> is exhausted from starring in my games, so during his downtime he's just relaxing in the shitty motel room that my minuscule development budget is able to afford for him, sipping a beer and watching bad TV. I wanted the flickering glow of the TV to highlight his crotch as well as the phallic placement of the beer bottle, but the camera angle also suggests we're watching the TV with him. We're ogling him but we're embodying him at the same time, and that weird concurrent-subject-object relationship is how video games often work.<br /><br />I hope the sustained mood and quiet tone of this scene (thanks to <a href="https://ellaguro.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank">Liz Ryerson</a> for the excellent menu music by the way) contrast with the loud flashiness of Hurt Me Plenty, Succulent, and Stick Shift, and suggest that there's something more to these works than my critically-acclaimed cheek physics technology, as great as they are.<br /><br />These games are loud in order to protect the times when they are quiet... because that's sometimes what people do too, right?Robert Yanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05595128450637115574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1130622109425093301.post-81973006814980014942016-06-07T14:02:00.000-04:002016-06-07T14:13:31.250-04:00Working with custom ObjectPreviews and SkinnedMeshRenderers in Unity<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sjHes_0JyOs/V1cKFVAPjxI/AAAAAAAAFDY/1a32Q5RdPAMh9aIawCc7UB2Q40hBEdAwQCLcB/s1600/attract12_morpheme-editor.gif" width="540" /></div><br />Unity's blendshape controls -- basically just a list of textboxes -- were going to cause me a lot of pain. After wrestling with broken AnimationClips for my previous attempt at facial expressions in my game Stick Shift, I decided to actually invest a day or two into building better tools for myself, inspired partly by <a href="https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Faceposer" target="_blank">Valve's old Faceposer tool for Source Engine 1</a>.<br /><br />To do that, I scripted the Unity editor to draw a custom inspector with sliders (based on <a href="https://github.com/cjacobwade/HelpfulScripts/blob/master/BlendShapeController.cs" target="_blank">Chris Wade's BlendShapeController.cs</a>) along with an interactive 3D face preview at the bottom of the inspector.<br /><br />The workflow I wanted was this:<br /><a name='more'></a><ul><li>Save blendshape settings as a "preset" in a separate asset file.</li><li>Load the blendshapes and blend freely between them whenever, in-game or in-editor.</li><li>Be able to tweak each file really easily, with a built-in 3D preview of the result.</li></ul>As usual with anything related to editor scripting, the Unity documentation is brief or non-existent, and at worse, straight-up misleading. For much of this, I was relying heavily on Matt Rix's amazing&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/MattRix/UnityDecompiled" target="_blank">UnityDecompiled repo</a>, where you can see all the internal Unity editor code and reverse-engineer whatever feature you need. (Don't worry, Unity is unofficially OK with it.) Unfortunately, while you might think you can do ___ because some part of the editor does it too, those functions are often locked in sealed internal classes that you can't easily access except through some <a href="http://purdyjotut.blogspot.com/2013/10/exploring-unity-with-reflection-and.html" target="_blank">messy code reflection</a>, so be careful.<br /><br />I also learned a lot from Tim Aksu's <a href="http://timaksu.com/post/126337219047/spruce-up-your-custom-unity-inspectors-with-a" target="_blank">primer to the ObjectPreview system</a>, the editor system that displays any kind of asset preview from 2D to 3D to sounds, usually at the bottom of your inspector. If you want to work with ObjectPreview, definitely read that first.<br /><br />The two most important steps here are to override HasPreviewGUI( ), which flags to the editor to display a preview pane or not, and then override OnPreviewGUI( ), where you actually do your GUI drawing. (Also, for the sake of completeness, here's a link to <a href="http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/ObjectPreview.html" target="_blank">the scant Unity docs on ObjectPreview</a>.)<br /><br />When the editor draws a real-time 3D preview for a Mecanim animator, or displays a static thumbnail for your 3D model, it hooks into this ObjectPreview system via <a href="http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/class-RenderTexture.html" target="_blank">RenderTextures</a>.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-h5-Steep3gM/V1cKRivBbuI/AAAAAAAAFDg/_TdaRuEmFhUXGGSN1PpmekIcDMqTs6AUQCLcB/s1600/attract12_morpheme-lerp.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="291" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-h5-Steep3gM/V1cKRivBbuI/AAAAAAAAFDg/_TdaRuEmFhUXGGSN1PpmekIcDMqTs6AUQCLcB/s320/attract12_morpheme-lerp.gif" width="320" /></a></div>Your main goal is to setup this "mini scene" that's rendered just for this little preview window. For most 3D previews, you setup an internal camera, use <a href="https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Graphics.DrawMesh.html" target="_blank">Graphics.DrawMesh( )</a> to instantaneously draw a mesh without having to instantiate a GameObject, and then grab the resulting RenderTexture from the camera. To help you do that, Unity has a totally undocumented helper class called PreviewRenderUtility that sets up this internal in-editor scene with its own camera and everything. But that still doesn't change one very important fact -- <b>this is all still taking place in your currently open scene, with all the fog and lighting and shadows etc that entails.</b> If you don't want fog in your ObjectPreview, you might have to manually turn it off.<br /><br />My big problem, though, was that for facial expressions I needed to draw an animated skinned mesh, not just a plain mesh. It turns out, Unity's internal Mecanim 3D preview <a href="https://github.com/MattRix/UnityDecompiled/blob/master/UnityEditor/UnityEditor/AvatarPreview.cs" target="_blank">AvatarPreview</a> uses internal functions to cleanly manage and instantiate a GameObject, via an inaccessible function called EditorUtility.InstantiateForAnimatorPreview( )<br /><br />... and that general approach is basically what I did in the end:<br /><br />I instantiated a separate "preview" prefab, hid it away from the rest of my scene, applied any animations or blendshapes, and then called <a href="http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/SkinnedMeshRenderer.BakeMesh.html" target="_blank">SkinnedMeshRenderer.BakeMesh( )</a> to bake it down into a plain Mesh suitable for Graphics.DrawMesh( ). It works surprisingly well.<br /><br />For your reference, I've included most of my ObjectPreview code below. Much of it is borrowed from the UnityDecompiled <a href="https://github.com/MattRix/UnityDecompiled/blob/master/UnityEditor/UnityEditor/ModelInspector.cs" target="_blank">ModelInspector.cs</a>, so look there for some extra help. There's also probably a lot of bad broken things in my code, but it works for me and lets me do what I need to do, so I'm pretty much calling it done. Good luck in custom ObjectPreview land!<br /><br /><script src="https://gist.github.com/radiatoryang/a2282d44ba71848e498bb2e03da98991.js"></script><br /><noscript><br /><pre><code><br />using UnityEngine;<br />using UnityEditor;<br />using System;<br />using System.Collections;<br /><br />[CustomPreview(typeof(YourCustomScriptableObject))] // THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT, this is so the editor knows what this is supposed to be previewing at all<br />public class SkinnedMeshObjectPreviewExample : ObjectPreview {<br /><br />PreviewRenderUtility m_PreviewUtility;<br /><br />GameObject previewPrefab, previewInstance;<br />SkinnedMeshRenderer skinMeshRender, eyeballRender;<br />Mesh previewMesh, previewMeshEyeball;<br />Material previewMaterial;<br /><br />static Vector2 previewDir = new Vector2(-180f, 0f);<br />static float lerpSpeed = 0.5f;<br /><br />// very important to override this, it tells Unity to render an ObjectPreview at the bottom of the inspector<br />public override bool HasPreviewGUI() { return true; }<br /><br />private void Init() {<br />if (this.m_PreviewUtility == null) {<br />this.m_PreviewUtility = new PreviewRenderUtility();<br />this.m_PreviewUtility.m_CameraFieldOfView = 27f;<br />RefreshPreviewInstance();<br />}<br />}<br /><br />// the main ObjectPreview function... it's called constantly, like other IMGUI On*GUI() functions<br />public override void OnPreviewGUI(Rect r, GUIStyle background) {<br />// if this is happening, you have bigger problems<br />if (!ShaderUtil.hardwareSupportsRectRenderTexture) {<br />if (Event.current.type == EventType.Repaint) {<br />EditorGUI.DropShadowLabel(new Rect(r.x, r.y, r.width, 40f), "Mesh preview requires\nrender texture support");<br />}<br />return;<br />}<br />Init();<br />previewDir = Drag2D(previewDir, r);<br />if (Event.current.type != EventType.Repaint) { // if we don't need to update yet, then don't<br />return; <br />}<br />m_PreviewUtility.BeginPreview(r, background); // set up the PreviewRenderUtility's mini internal scene<br />DoRenderPreview();<br />Texture image = m_PreviewUtility.EndPreview(); // grab the RenderTexture resulting from DoRenderPreview() > RenderMeshPreview() > PreviewRenderUtility.m_Camera.Render()<br />GUI.DrawTexture(r, image, ScaleMode.StretchToFill, false); // draw the RenderTexture in the ObjectPreview pane<br />EditorGUI.DropShadowLabel(new Rect(r.x, r.y, r.width, 40f), target.name);<br />}<br /><br />private void DoRenderPreview() {<br />if ( skinMeshRender == null ) {<br />RefreshPreviewInstance();<br />}<br /><br />// very important: we have to call BakeMesh, to bake that animated SkinnedMesh into a plain static Mesh suitable for Graphics.DrawMesh()<br />previewMesh = new Mesh();<br />previewMeshEyeball = new Mesh();<br />skinMeshRender.BakeMesh( previewMesh );<br />eyeballRender.BakeMesh( previewMeshEyeball );<br /><br />// now, actually render out the RenderTexture<br />RenderMeshPreview( previewMesh, m_PreviewUtility, previewMaterial, previewDir, -1);<br />}<br /><br />void RefreshPreviewInstance () {<br />// if we already instantiated a PreviewInstance previously but just lost the reference, then use that same instance instead of making a new one<br />var oldInstance = GameObject.Find( "FaceMorphemePreviewInstance" );<br />if ( oldInstance != null ) {<br />previewInstance = oldInstance;<br />} else { // no previous instance detected, so now let's make a fresh one<br />// very important: this loads the PreviewInstance prefab and temporarily instantiates it into PreviewInstance<br />previewPrefab = (GameObject)AssetDatabase.LoadAssetAtPath<gameobject>("Assets/gayclub/prefabs_npc/facepreview.prefab");<br />previewInstance = (GameObject)GameObject.Instantiate( previewPrefab, previewPrefab.transform.position, previewPrefab.transform.rotation );<br />previewInstance.name = "FaceMorphemePreviewInstance";<br />// HideFlags are special editor-only settings that let you have *secret* GameObjects in a scene, or to tell Unity not to save that temporary GameObject as part of the scene<br />previewInstance.hideFlags = HideFlags.DontSaveInEditor | HideFlags.DontSaveInBuild; // you could also hide it from the hierarchy or inspector, but personally I like knowing everything that's there<br />}<br />var sRenders = previewInstance.GetComponentsInChildren<skinnedmeshrenderer>();<br />// when instantiating stuff in the scene with HideFlags, that stuff often gets broken when loading a new scene...<br />if ( sRenders == null || sRenders.Length == 0 ) { // so I setup a check to detect that case and clean-up<br />Debug.Log("cleaning up leftover PreviewInstance!");<br />OnDestroy();<br />RefreshPreviewInstance();<br />return;<br />} else { // if nothing is wrong, then we proceed normally<br />skinMeshRender = sRenders[0];<br />eyeballRender = sRenders[1];<br />}<br />previewMaterial = skinMeshRender.sharedMaterial; // use sharedMaterial or else you will instantiate a new material<br />}<br /><br />void RenderMeshPreview (Mesh mesh, PreviewRenderUtility previewUtility, Material material, Vector2 direction, int meshSubset ) {<br />if (mesh == null || previewUtility == null) {<br />return;<br />}<br />// Measure the mesh's bounds so you know where to put the camera and stuff<br />Bounds bounds = mesh.bounds;<br />float magnitude = bounds.extents.magnitude;<br />float distance = 4f * magnitude;<br /><br />// setup the ObjectPreview's camera<br />previewUtility.m_Camera.backgroundColor = Color.gray;<br />previewUtility.m_Camera.clearFlags = CameraClearFlags.Color;<br />previewUtility.m_Camera.transform.position = new Vector3( 0f, 0.85f, -0.5f); // this used to be "-Vector3.forward * num" but I hardcoded my camera position instead<br />previewUtility.m_Camera.transform.rotation = Quaternion.identity;<br />previewUtility.m_Camera.nearClipPlane = 0.3f;<br />previewUtility.m_Camera.farClipPlane = distance + magnitude * 1.1f;<br /><br />// figure out where to put the model<br />Quaternion quaternion = Quaternion.Euler(0f, direction.x, 0f); // this used to have "Quaternion.Euler(direction.y, 0f, 0f) * " to apply pitch rotation as well, but I didn't need it<br />Vector3 pos = quaternion * -bounds.center;<br /><br />// we are technically rendering everything in the scene, so scene fog might affect it...<br />bool fog = RenderSettings.fog; // ... let's remember the current fog setting...<br />Unsupported.SetRenderSettingsUseFogNoDirty(false); // ... and then temporarily turn it off<br /><br />// submesh support, in case the mesh is made of multiple parts<br />int subMeshCount = mesh.subMeshCount;<br />if (meshSubset < 0 || meshSubset >= subMeshCount) {<br />for (int i = 0; i < subMeshCount; i++) {<br /> // PreviewRenderUtility.DrawMesh() actually draws the mesh<br /> previewUtility.DrawMesh(mesh, pos, quaternion, material, i);<br /> previewUtility.DrawMesh(previewMeshEyeball, pos, quaternion, material, i); // my model's eyeballs are a separate mesh, so I have to draw that too<br /> }<br /> } else {<br /> // no submeshes here so let's just draw it normally<br /> previewUtility.DrawMesh(mesh, pos, quaternion, material, meshSubset);<br /> previewUtility.DrawMesh(previewMeshEyeball, pos, quaternion, material, meshSubset);<br /> }<br /> // VERY IMPORTANT: this manually tells the camera to render and produce the render texture<br /> previewUtility.m_Camera.Render();<br /><br /> // reset the scene's fog from before<br /> Unsupported.SetRenderSettingsUseFogNoDirty(fog);<br /> } <br /><br /> // this is where you draw any settings or controls above the ObjectPreview<br /> public override void OnPreviewSettings() {<br /> GUILayout.Label( "LerpSpeed: " );<br /> lerpSpeed = EditorGUILayout.Slider( lerpSpeed, 0.1f, 0.5f, GUILayout.Width( 100f ) );<br /> }<br /><br /> // cleanup stuff so we don't leak everywhere<br /> public void OnDestroy() {<br /> Debug.Log("FaceMorphemePreview OnDestroy()");<br /> if (this.m_PreviewUtility != null) {<br /> this.m_PreviewUtility.Cleanup();<br /> this.m_PreviewUtility = null;<br /> }<br /> if ( previewInstance != null ) {<br /> GameObject.DestroyImmediate( previewInstance );<br /> }<br /> }<br /><br /> // from http://timaksu.com/post/126337219047/spruce-up-your-custom-unity-inspectors-with-a<br /> // this is our inlined version of EditorGUIUtility.Draw2D(), which is internal or something<br /> public static Vector2 Drag2D(Vector2 scrollPosition, Rect position) {<br /> int controlID = GUIUtility.GetControlID("Slider".GetHashCode(), FocusType.Passive);<br /> Event current = Event.current;<br /> switch (current.GetTypeForControl(controlID)) {<br /> case EventType.MouseDown:<br /> if (position.Contains(current.mousePosition) && position.width > 50f) {<br />GUIUtility.hotControl = controlID;<br />current.Use();<br />EditorGUIUtility.SetWantsMouseJumping(1);<br />}<br />break;<br />case EventType.MouseUp:<br />if (GUIUtility.hotControl == controlID) {<br />GUIUtility.hotControl = 0;<br />}<br />EditorGUIUtility.SetWantsMouseJumping(0);<br />break;<br />case EventType.MouseDrag:<br />if (GUIUtility.hotControl == controlID) {<br />scrollPosition -= current.delta * (float)((!current.shift) ? 1 : 3) / Mathf.Min(position.width, position.height) * 140f;<br />scrollPosition.y = Mathf.Clamp(scrollPosition.y, -90f, 90f);<br />current.Use();<br />GUI.changed = true;<br />}<br />break;<br />}<br />return scrollPosition;<br />}<br /><br />}<br /></code></pre></noscript><br /><br />One last note: the comments here are unmonitored because I'm busy. You can certainly ask for help, but don't expect a response from me. Sorry.Robert Yanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05595128450637115574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1130622109425093301.post-36445257153922737292016-05-22T13:02:00.003-04:002016-07-17T14:54:21.421-04:00Progress report: Moses<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wUcc-STMY40/V0HTI6N6_dI/AAAAAAAAFCk/hvKaTZQ8BLw3nNIQnMNTx1wfCEC7IFMdQCLcB/s1600/moses05.gif" width="540" /></div><br />Now that summer vacation is here and I don't have to teach, I now have a lot more time to put into some projects. Here's one of the new ones I'm doing for the summer:<br /><br />"Moses" (tentative title) is a collaboration between me and <a href="https://twitter.com/eddiecameron" target="_blank">Eddie Cameron</a> for the <a href="https://medium.com/@timhwang/the-power-broker-a-game-design-competition-5eb4ff1f8146#.z2x97498g" target="_blank">Power Broker game design challenge</a>. It's kind of like 80 Days plus SimCity / Cities In Motion -- you are famous urban planner Robert Moses and you have to drive around New York City and visit various locations around the map, but to make commuting easier, you can also build public works projects like highways, bridges, public housing, a UN building or two, etc. which all interacts with the traffic simulation and public approval. Maybe there will be little narrative vignettes and conversations along the way too.<br /><br />Eddie has been doing all the complicated math simulation stuff, while I've been writing a lot of the basic game code and UI. We're still basically in the early prototyping stages, trying to figure out a lot of the game as we go along. Here's some of our thinking...<br /><a name='more'></a><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-k3OE7HaRIGM/V0HSS8X0amI/AAAAAAAAFCY/MUF8OR1f9J8X5scnVltHgcKZzcmy4Rh-QCLcB/s1600/moses02.gif" width="540" /></div><br />Robert Moses, at the height of his power, was highly respected as an authority on urban planning. From 1930-1960, much of the US really did believe the ideal future would involve everyone owning their own car and living in suburban Long Island and commuting into the city for work. Moses designed some of the first multi-lane expressways / consulted regularly for huge highway projects around the US.<br /><br />The weird thing is that Moses never really drove himself. He belonged to a moneyed class and grew up chauffeured around in an expensive limousine. This privileged class didn't drive, but rather they were driven. Driving was largely an abstraction to him, from his daily life to his urban planning strategies. He never had to deal first-hand with finding parking, navigating complex networks of one-way roads, or evading collisions with other drivers -- the first-person raw phenomenological experience of driving.<br /><br />In that vein, we want to abstract the act of driving to a second-person macro-level waiting game, a strategic expenditure of resources, because that probably best reflects Moses' mindset.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zwcCIf5XMqg/V0HTSJL_9SI/AAAAAAAAFCo/77dHDUxSkwMDsyBzO5aNzfsUmnz3EDwAgCLcB/s1600/moses03.jpg" width="540" /></div><br />And if you understand that mindset, then maybe you can also understand wanting to build a highway plowing through Central Park, or bulldozing the weird mess that is Greenwich Village. You can also understand centralizing numerous city agencies under one authority. It's more efficient! Moses knew how to manipulate government funding systems and infrastructure better than anyone.<br /><br />Unfortunately, those were systems with clearly defined rules, and people don't really work like that. Starting in the 1950s, he started making more and more miscalculations about how people would react to his proposals.<br /><br />Moses tried to bulldoze a beloved Central Park playground to put in a parking lot, and his 1964 World's Fair was a massive embarrassing failure. The writer Jane Jacobs argued convincingly that cities need distinctive neighborhoods with "eyes on the street" to nurture a middle class, shaping much of the foundation for theories of "New Urbanism". With the general public as well as the intelligentsia turning against Moses, city officials and rich New York City families like the Rockefellers were able to push him out of power.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3xnfohbfs5Q/V0HcwV3cHqI/AAAAAAAAFC4/kFNoclfCJO8jOYL6ww-DTbf-MgKL-rMAACLcB/s1600/moses04.gif" width="540" /></div><br />These days, there's more than a bit of nostalgia for the days of Robert Moses. (Especially since his most prominent critic <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/01/what-jane-jacobs-got-wrong-about-cities.html" target="_blank">Jane Jacobs is now falling out of fashion</a>, with critics blaming her theories for facilitating gentrification.)<br /><br />Yes, he basically set back public transportation for decades and cursed the subway system to perpetual neglect, and yes many of his policies upheld systemic racism, and yes he quasi-legally centralized government authority so that he answered to no one, and yes he wanted to destroy unique neighborhoods that formed the very fabric of the city... but Moses was able to build dozens of bridges and expressways, hundreds of parks and pools, and thousands of units of public housing, as well as secure the Lincoln Center and the United Nations building.<br /><br />What will be his legacy?<br /><br />I think I want this game to end with water. The entire in-game city will biblically flood with water until there's nothing left, and then Moses will slowly float into the frame, drifting nowhere in particular.Robert Yanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05595128450637115574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1130622109425093301.post-14075422874020589712016-05-10T18:20:00.002-04:002016-05-10T18:20:50.810-04:00new game re-release: Cobra Club HD<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FKmOHGCit78/VzJekIY9u8I/AAAAAAAAFBw/_UovSdrJol0wxrIRYz-I5pL01MCxclcxQCLcB/s640/cobraclub-hd_00_censored.jpg" width="540" /></div><br />Itch.io is celebrating <a href="https://itch.io/week" target="_blank">Itch.io Week</a>, and on Tuesday they featured <a href="https://itch.io/blog/4/developer-interview-with-robert-yang" target="_blank">a short interview with me</a> and t<a href="https://itch.io/blog/5/developer-interview-with-kyle-seeley" target="_blank">he creator of Emily Is Away</a>. A bunch of indies are also doing random sales or non-sales of their games on itch too, so I thought I'd join the fun and re-release my free downloadable game Cobra Club as <a href="https://radiatoryang.itch.io/cobraclub" target="_blank">"Cobra Club HD."</a><br /><br /><iframe frameborder="0" height="169" src="https://itch.io/embed/23271?border_width=2&amp;bg_color=94c29e&amp;fg_color=222222&amp;link_color=ec6960&amp;border_color=709e7a" width="554"></iframe><br /><br />This is basically the new build that has been going around at some events and festivals, like Now Play This and A MAZE -- it features a completely new rebuilt penis, pubic hair support, strap-on mode, and various other tweaks. Unfortunately, I couldn't get foreskins working 100% properly all the time, and dudes kept straight-splaining "what foreskins actually look like" to me, so I decided to just disable that feature entirely. <i>Happy now? NOW NOBODY GETS FORESKINS!!</i><br /><br />As always, if you encounter any problems, just follow the troubleshooting instructions on the game page, and send me an e-mail with your logs. Have fun!Robert Yanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05595128450637115574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1130622109425093301.post-40523062535254697382016-04-26T20:25:00.002-04:002016-04-26T20:31:10.707-04:00Report from the field: A MAZE 2016<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OXOQdz2L_ps/VyAFap2L_GI/AAAAAAAAFBQ/lJh0MfbCTesLS2FoplFmpKzQnVe65dkXQCLcB/s1600/IMG_20160420_160817.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OXOQdz2L_ps/VyAFap2L_GI/AAAAAAAAFBQ/lJh0MfbCTesLS2FoplFmpKzQnVe65dkXQCLcB/s640/IMG_20160420_160817.jpg" width="540" /></a></div><br />I was told to look out for things that are stereotypically representative of Berlin -- a poster for a "party against racism", a nearby music venue called "Suicide", a group of children walking a large dog on a rope. Berlin seems a bit like the nostalgic ideal of San Francisco or New York City that 30-40-somethings routinely mourn to any nearby insolent&nbsp;<i>millenials</i>&nbsp;-- because Berlin is relatively cheap, young, and raw. It's basically the place for young creative people to be right now.<br /><br /><a href="http://amaze-berlin.de/">A MAZE 2016</a> began with festival director Thorsten Storno decrying the business-ification of indie games and dominance of commercial attitudes in festivals, and arguing for the necessity of non-commercial spaces in games. Then, literally, flamethrowers began shooting up pillars of fire behind him.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0itJtiJ0HK4/VyAFaHr3qyI/AAAAAAAAFBM/DX6GA38jTsgCaM5FL09tbahQ1eS8EuvOgCKgB/s1600/IMG_20160421_174424.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0itJtiJ0HK4/VyAFaHr3qyI/AAAAAAAAFBM/DX6GA38jTsgCaM5FL09tbahQ1eS8EuvOgCKgB/s640/IMG_20160421_174424.jpg" width="540" /></a></div><br />This is a very different tone from most US games festivals, which often try to accommodate monetization-types and commercial indies alongside non-commercial artists and students. There is no such pretense here. Here, there are no posh "meet with Sony" events, no chicken caesar wraps sponsored by Microsoft, not even any bored attendees clutching their Nintendo DS -- instead, that kind of stuff is at "Quo Vadis", a nearby industry-oriented conference that's named after the final dungeon in a Final Fantasy game.<br /><br />So there's a funny "purity" to A MAZE. It knows what it wants to be, and it has the space and resources to actually be that thing. And apparently that thing is a bunch of artists and game makers huddled around a garbage can fire, clutching tepid 3 dollar beers as the distinct smell of ambient-disco-trance wafts through the air at 3 AM...<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iD5qYN5xBeM/VyAFaBhOtBI/AAAAAAAAFBI/fUzRbug2MPcdraf3e4qJ1OBe0Z5tT8tzwCKgB/s1600/IMG_20160422_001256.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iD5qYN5xBeM/VyAFaBhOtBI/AAAAAAAAFBI/fUzRbug2MPcdraf3e4qJ1OBe0Z5tT8tzwCKgB/s640/IMG_20160422_001256.jpg" width="540" /></a></div><br />I think I kinda miss it already.Robert Yanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05595128450637115574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1130622109425093301.post-36412815087220310812016-04-16T20:24:00.000-04:002016-04-16T20:28:01.713-04:00new game: "Shapes Hit!" for Ludum Dare 35 (theme: "shapeshift")<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tNMgA384z6E/VxLXMvArb5I/AAAAAAAAFAs/sKJd1Sv73GE_shFL5AeaeWJdSaYvb77wwCLcB/s1600/shapeshit3.jpg" width="540" /></div><br />It's April and I still haven't finished and released anything all year, so I thought I'd push something out pretty fast -- it's a quick little game for the 48 hour game jam "Ludum Dare" -- called "Shapes Hit!" <i>(content warning: there is poop in this game.)</i><br /><br />I think it's a pretty short straightforward arcade game: just hold down the left mouse button, move your mouse to aim, and try to hit all four targets. You can play an in-browser WebGL version on the <a href="http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&amp;uid=4369" target="_blank">Ludum Dare entry page</a>, or over on <a href="https://radiatoryang.itch.io/shapeshit">the itch.io page</a>... and that's pretty much all there is to it.<br /><br />This isn't a very deep or intellectually complex game. Some of my friends tell me I'm the Robert Mapplethorpe of games, but sometimes I think I'd rather aspire to be the John Waters of games?<br /><br />Things I still have to do: add some audio and sound, and maybe push out some Windows / OSX / Linux desktop standalone builds. I'll probably wait until after the jam for that.Robert Yanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05595128450637115574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1130622109425093301.post-25056901602695360352016-04-08T12:40:00.001-04:002016-04-08T12:40:49.531-04:00"Why I Am Good At Bad Sex (... in games! IN GAMES!!!)" at A MAZE 2016 in Berlin, April 21 at 10:00 AMMy blog posts lately have been mostly talk announcements or transcripts... sorry. I think that's probably the downside of getting noticed and getting invited to do talks -- I end up having less time to write posts (I don't know how Emily Short manages to do it!) but I also end up "saving my ideas" for talks instead of posting about them.<br /><br />That said, here's another talk announcement -- I'll be speaking at <a href="http://amaze-berlin.de/" target="_blank">A MAZE 2016</a> in Berlin, Germany, on April 21st. I'm kind of anxious about it because the last time I gave a talk in Germany was GDC Europe 2012, and I fundamentally mis-read who my audience was going to be, and the talk didn't go very well. I'll try hard not to fuck it up this time, especially since I'm basically the first talk of the whole conference! Ahhhhh!<br /><br />Here's the <a href="http://program.amaze-berlin.de/event/6f08/robert-yang-why-i-am-good-at-bad-sex-in-games-in-games" target="_blank">talk description from the A MAZE program</a>:<br /><blockquote>If you always win a game as fast as possible, then you are probably very good at games... but if you always have sex as fast as possible, then you are probably bad at sex. (Why did no one ever tell you???) So what does it mean to be good at a sex game, and anyway, what is a good sex game? In this talk, I will talk about all the gay sex games I've been making, as well as many other sex games I've been enjoying, even some of the straight sex games. But it's also OK if you never play any of these games -- because it's even hotter when you watch.<br /><br />Content warning: this talk contains sexual content</blockquote>Basically, I want to (usefully) conflate notions of skill / quality / value / "goodness" with regard to sex and sex games, and I'm going to try to connect the past 3-4 "big ideas" I've written about... Ideas about how sex functions in games, about games and intimacy, and about how playing a game is now ancillary to witnessing a game.<br /><br />Again, hopefully I don't fuck it up.<br /><br />If you'll be around, feel free to say hello, I'll be around for most of the festival.Robert Yanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05595128450637115574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1130622109425093301.post-75551900214865832172016-03-28T11:28:00.000-04:002016-03-28T11:28:22.374-04:00"Let's Get Lit: How to Light Your Game Like a Strip Club" @ 6 PM, April 30 at IndieCade East 2016, New York City<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8vyq9Bk4t1A/Vviv3d1yDkI/AAAAAAAAE_8/WX0OzYeA_Y415CqKnWzgOt-hH-DwEdk7Q/s1600/magicmike_lighting.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="340" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8vyq9Bk4t1A/Vviv3d1yDkI/AAAAAAAAE_8/WX0OzYeA_Y415CqKnWzgOt-hH-DwEdk7Q/s640/magicmike_lighting.png" width="540" /></a></div><br /><a href="https://indiecadeeast2016.sched.org/event/c7d19f5bd5223b435434805247f98fbb" target="_blank">I'll be speaking at IndieCade East this year about video game lighting</a> -- but to spice it up, I'm also going to talk about hunky dudes taking their clothes off in the seminal beefcake stripper movie Magic Mike (2012). The director, Steven Soderbergh, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20140509042940/http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-06-27/entertainment/sc-mov-0626-soderberg-movies-20120628_1_magic-mike-strip-club-moments" target="_blank">intentionally went for naturalistic "bad lighting"</a> reminiscent of a strip club. Look at the shot above -- most of the men are in shadow! That's actually a pretty radical aesthetic for something that's supposedly a few steps away from commercial pornography. Plus, lighting can often be a bit of a dry topic, so I felt it was important to pair it with some sweaty studs to help the medicine go down. It'll be fun for the whole family.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.indiecade.com/east2016" target="_blank">IndieCade East 2016</a> runs April 29 - May 1 at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City, and thank god it's no longer in the dead of winter.Robert Yanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05595128450637115574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1130622109425093301.post-53374136219121672642016-03-23T11:30:00.000-04:002016-03-23T13:23:15.740-04:00"The game industry needs to get laid and just chill already" @ GDC 2016<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MCL0zSOZlRc/VvHPgUuJWSI/AAAAAAAAE_A/U-EbfRkQ2kA_7H1F_DyV9dUU9sjml0WMA/s1600/getlaid0.jpg" /></div><br /><i>This is a lightly edited transcript of the 5 minute microtalk I delivered <a href="http://schedule.gdconf.com/session/gdc-microtalks-2016-everyone-loves-to-play" target="_blank">as part of a panel at GDC 2016</a>. Thanks to Bennett Foddy and Richard Lemarchand for their advice and assistance.</i><br /><br /><b>CONTENT WARNING: I'll be showing and discussing some sexual content.</b><br /><br />I’m an indie developer, and <a href="http://debacle.us/" target="_blank">I make small experimental games about sex and intimacy</a>. Games about spanking, about sucking, about dick pics in your mom’s bathroom, about showering... you know, things we all enjoy. I also try way too hard on my graphics. My shower game Rinse and Repeat is <a href="http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2015/11/rinse-and-repeat-technical-post-partum.html" target="_blank">the most technologically advanced male shower sim on the market</a> -- I waste so many draw calls on physically simulated refracting water particles BUT I DON’T CARE, it’s clearly worth it. <br /><br />I kinda feel like I have to make these games because few people do. By and large, even AAA games you might associate with gay sex -- they aren’t really about gay sex. I firmly believe we can all do better in the future. (To learn more about sex games, see <a href="http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2015/12/sex-games-part-0-sex-games-awaken.html" target="_blank">my sex games talk</a>.)<br /><a name='more'></a><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0XKn6CqvylI/VvHPnGiru0I/AAAAAAAAE_E/XpwOF5DULqgRdCiEvAKYEeX3wbK1jU3yg/s1600/getlaid1.jpg" /></div><br />But my sex games are also about how sex is often NOT SEXY. At the end of <a href="https://radiatoryang.itch.io/cobraclub" target="_blank">my dick pic game</a>, for example, your dick pics and chat transcripts get leaked to the internet. My game's community site <a href="http://cobra-club.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">currently has over 25,000 stolen dick pics</a> from players. This violation of privacy should scare players a little. Sex can be scary like that.<br /><br />So why did Rust, a multiplayer survival game <a href="http://www.polygon.com/2015/6/25/8841003/rust-penis-size-garry-newman-interview" target="_blank">full of penises</a>, sell better than Cobra Club, my dick pic game that ignores all that multiplayer survival nonsense and just cuts straight to the dick -- is it more talent? Marketing? Is Rust just a better game? Well, I WISH THAT WAS WHY! Because the actual reason is, <b>I can’t even sell my game at all.</b> If I do, I risk PayPal banning me as a “high risk account”. Even if they don’t ban me yet, I’m young and poor, I don’t think I can even risk arguing with PayPal.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--hi_1JDx0rI/VvHPwe2Ms6I/AAAAAAAAE_I/b7GFAOJUWW0aOh9p-zJBeB-lACcqkj1SA/s1600/getlaid2.jpg" /></div><br />The <a href="https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full" target="_blank">PayPal Acceptable Use policy</a> reads, <i>"You may not use the PayPal service for [...] <u><b>certain</b></u> sexually oriented materials or services."</i><br /><br />What does "certain" mean? Which ones? They won't tell you. These vague policies let <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2015/12/02/paypal-square-and-big-bankings-war-on-the-sex-industry/" target="_blank">banks and payment processors like Chase ban a condom company in 2014 for selling condoms, even though Chase managed finances for Trojan Condoms</a>. They say not to "cross a line", but the line is invisible and constantly shifting, with special exceptions carved out for larger companies.<br /><br />This sucks because PayPal is used all over the game industry. PayPal can threaten to walk away from Steam, or Humble, or even Itch.IO... If PayPal makes Gabe Newell choose between carrying my dick game OR letting customers buy things with PayPal, he’s probably going to choose PayPal. <br /><br />But PayPal is not the only company bad at sex. Did you know that Twitch.TV bans games? <i>[shockingly ask audience members: Did you know? DID YOU KNOW?]</i><br /><br />Here’s what Twitch tells you when they ban your game:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4SxOB5tznqE/VvHP6fzgZgI/AAAAAAAAE_M/etSkIOixJ1Ix8VvnrZ-lg-foEZV_OHF2g/s1600/getlaid3.jpg" /></div><br />NOTHING. Twitch tells you NOTHING when they ban your game. When did Twitch ban it? Why did they ban it? They won’t tell you. I know this because they’ve banned my games. TWICE. And no e-mail. Not even a little pity tweet.<br /><br />Here’s <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/user/legal?page=rules-of-conduct" target="_blank">Twitch’s Rules of Conduct</a>: <i>“<u><b>Any</b></u> content or activity involving pornography, sexual intercourse, or adult services is prohibited.”</i><br /><br />Hmmm, “any” content is very different from PayPal’s “certain”... It seems pretty clear, huh? <b>Let’s all play, “DID TWITCH BAN IT?”... </b>I’ll show you a game, and feel free to say “yes” or “no”, and then I’ll tell you the answer. Ready?<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fz_AR25AVDw/VvHQFPpIs_I/AAAAAAAAE_Q/Vt3PvjG_KFs7PrYnSbZM6LIioEEx7LQjQ/s1600/getlaid4.jpg" /></div><br />Did Twitch ban Rinse and Repeat -- my weird shower game that ends in loneliness and rejection -- even though I even went to the trouble of pixelating the penises -- DID TWITCH BAN IT?... <i>[wait for audience response]...</i> Yes, they banned it. And if my players stream it, Twitch will ban them too.<br /><br />Did Twitch ban The Witcher 3, which has dozens of topless women, hundreds if you count some of the monsters, as well as this really cool unicorn sex scene -- DID TWITCH BAN IT?...<i> [wait for audience response]...</i> Nope, it is NOT banned! I guess Twitch thinks having sex with women isn't sexual.<br /><br />Did Twitch ban Second Life? Keep in mind that in 2013, only 10-15% of private player-owned land in Second Life was used for sex. (And if you don’t know what Second Life is, ask your parents.) DID TWITCH BAN IT?... <i>[wait for audience response]... </i>YES. All of Second Life is banned.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-78K1Uf6HQOg/VvHQJA5mZ3I/AAAAAAAAE_Y/1BRvShjyY0UJJF3qwCLThGa2qOh-W0sIA/s1600/getlaid5.jpg" /></div><br />Did Twitch ban What’s Under Your Blanket, a cartoon masturbation joke game about a teenager choking his chicken while his family keeps barging into his bedroom -- DID TWITCH BAN IT?... <i>[wait for audience response]... </i>YES. What if teenage boys saw this game? They might start masturbating!<br /><br />Did Twitch ban South Park: Stick of Truth, an RPG where you fight giant testicles and penis monsters, and get graphically probed by aliens? DID TWITCH BAN IT?...<i> [wait for audience response]...</i> NO, Twitch did NOT ban this game / media franchise that directly seeks controversy.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x0BudrCu_cI/VvHQVJcQyTI/AAAAAAAAE_c/bk4f30upwikkuoAFMAKyzaIX6N00xWwaA/s1600/getlaid6.jpg" /></div><br />So not only does Twitch have a bad policy, but they also enforce this bad policy very inconsistently. If I were cynical, I would say that Twitch allows plenty of sex and nudity in games with big publishers, but isn’t nearly as “understanding” with small indie games.<br /><br />But it doesn’t have to be like that. Here’s <a href="https://vimeo.com/help/faq/watching-videos/reporting-abuse-and-violations#how-does-vimeo-determine-the-difference-between-pornography-and-artistic-or-non-sexual-nudity" target="_blank">Vimeo’s Guidelines</a>: “... we allow depictions of nudity and sexuality that serve a clear creative, artistic, aesthetic, or narrative purpose.”<br /><br />Compared to PayPal and Twitch, getting banned from Vimeo was so PLEASANT -- they actually<i> talked to me,</i> and then I flagged my video as Mature Content and put it behind an age gate, and e-mailed them back -- and then they understood and they UN-banned me, and now we all enjoy the fruits of clear consistent boundaries and communication. And all that makes for some great sex!<br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-o-jF-fWAxuw/VvHQilD6GCI/AAAAAAAAE_k/WCjaSBqby90KyqxZnYHryYWov2M652Gxg/s1600/getlaid7.jpg" /></div><br />If games want to be the most powerful industry and artform in the world, then don’t lose your shit about a dick joke, ok? <br /><br />EVERYONE LOVES TO PLAY GAMES! SOME OF THESE GAMES ARE ABOUT SEX!<br /><br />DON’T BAN GAMES JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE ABOUT SEX. <br /><br />SOCIETY WILL NOT COLLAPSE.<br /><br />CHILL OUT. GET OVER IT.<br /><br />Thanks for listening.Robert Yanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05595128450637115574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1130622109425093301.post-59441929927920266502016-03-13T14:20:00.001-04:002016-03-13T14:22:42.426-04:00GDC Microtalks 2016: "Everybody Loves to Play", March 17 at 4 PM in Room 135, North HallIt's GDC season again.<br /><br />I'm going to be delivering a 5 minute microtalk on Thursday as part of MC Richard Lemarchand's impressive lineup, alongside Jenn Frank, Bennett Foddy, Steve Gaynor, Mathew Kumar, Christina Norman, Henrike Lode, Brian Allgeier, and Aleissia Laidacker. If you're busy around that time, don't worry, I'll probably put my slides up at some point, and you can also check out the video recording later too. For more info, see the GDC session scheduler -- <a href="http://schedule.gdconf.com/session/gdc-microtalks-2016-everyone-loves-to-play" target="_blank">"GDC Microtalks 2016: Everyone Loves to Play"</a><br /><br />I'll also be around at various places / parties, so feel free to say hey. Robert Yanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05595128450637115574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1130622109425093301.post-71270934630061924682016-03-07T12:24:00.001-05:002016-03-07T12:31:03.626-05:00A history (and the triumph) of the environment artist: on The Witness and Firewatch<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lV3UbK8JjHE/VtduFL8c6sI/AAAAAAAAE-M/cy7hhjvysuM/s640/shot_2016.01.31__time_15_48_n03.png" width="540" /></div><br /><i>This post vaguely spoils random bits of Firewatch and The Witness. I wouldn't worry about it.</i><br /><br />Only a few years ago, hiking games (first person games with a focus on traversing large naturalistic landscapes) were rather fringe. Early indie masterpieces like <a href="http://twistedtreegames.com/proteus/" target="_blank">Proteus</a> and <a href="http://www.icewatergames.com/eidolon/" target="_blank">Eidolon</a> abstracted the landscape into pixelated symbols, with a special interest in simulating weather and wildlife to make it feel real. But it took "mid-period" hiking blockbusters like The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, and Dear Esther (2012 remake) to monetize the genre with all their glossy near-photorealistic graphics.<br /><br />Now we are entering a later period of hiking games, epitomized by The Witness and Firewatch's less realistic visuals. It represents these environment artists finally asserting their control over a project and their identities as artists, within older traditions of gardening and landscape painting. To better understand this latest shift, let's think about the social and technical history of the environment artist in 3D games.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GcMbcnl2J80/VtNUujrpJQI/AAAAAAAAE8I/ocgCYuhy8Js/s1600/hotryu_buttsmack.gif" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="540" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">What we notice: Hot Ryu, ass-slapping. What we ignore: the background.</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />The rise of the environment artist is kind of recent. Consider the pre-indie-moment days of early-mid 2000s, when the vast majority of popular threads on <a href="http://polycount.com/" target="_blank">Polycount</a> (arguably the biggest and most popular game art community) were by 3D character artists. <b>Pretty much everyone wanted to be a character artist.</b> The more aspirational character artists usually got this advice from the experienced artists:<br /><ul><li>"study more anatomy, bodies don't do what you think they do"</li><li>"don't rush into detail, fix your basic shapes, your design makes no sense"</li><li>"you may never get good enough to get hired in AAA as a character artist; consider becoming an environment artist instead, which studios need more of"</li></ul>Character artists occupied a special place of prestige. Games culture fawns over Hot Ryu's ass, or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70jVUBnp6lQ" target="_blank">Nathan Drake's detailed stubble</a>, not the authentic scratches meticulously etched on DirtyGreenMetalDumpster #16 behind Mr. Drake. Per asset, developers generally budget much more processing power and resources to characters. Character artists are allowed to show-off, and their work prominently features in marketing materials. Developers and engines further institutionalize this bias with "cinematic effects" like depth of field, which conveniently blurs the background behind characters in cutscenes -- or consider "competitive" games that let you turn off the environment entirely and play in a basic spartan stage. This is all part of a conscious branding strategy by AAA, <a href="http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/12/the-10-worst-trends-in-video-game-cover-art/line-in-the-sand" target="_blank">to require characters at the forefront of their branding</a>. The environment cannot be the "star." We wouldn't want that dumpster to overshadow Nathan Drake's dynamic chest hair physics flapping in the wind!<br /><br />This is the conventional wisdom: characters are "expensive" and deserve to be, but environments aren't and don't. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lYw9nbntaQU/VtNYVSayHjI/AAAAAAAAE8U/boJ-2MwQfzY/s1600/polycount_models.jpg" width="540" /></div><br />To a certain extent, I think the 3D game art community's bias against "environmental art" as "lower" than character art stemmed partly from Polycount's tradition and history as a Quake character skins website. <br /><br />But this bias also came from the division of work in the game industry. Environment art was treated like an odd-job that random artists did. More often, level designers made environment art as part of their jobs. Many of the most successful level designers working in early 3D engines like Doom / Quake / Unreal did their own modeling, texturing, and lighting, using integrated in-engine building systems like sectors or BSP. That was simply how those game engines worked.<br /><br />While I'm sure some studios employed dedicated environment artists, the role wasn't really widespread until game engines and better hardware let level designers ignore the specifics of construction. 3D game engines began moving toward a "modular" pipeline where dedicated environment artists built prefabricated "modules", and then level designers would slot the modular tiles into place. As this happened, many level designers I know from that generation, like <a href="http://www.philipk.net/" target="_blank">Philip "Blaz" Klevestav</a>, <a href="http://www.thiagoklafke.com/" target="_blank">Thiago "Minos" Klafke</a>, or the legendary <a href="http://www.sparth.com/" target="_blank">Nicolas "Sparth" Bouvier</a>, were suddenly forced to pick whether they wanted to be artists or designers, and they decided to specialize as artists. (Though some level designers known for their art, like the famous Doom modder <a href="http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Iikka_Ker%C3%A4nen_%28Fingers%29" target="_blank">Iikka "Fingers" Keränen</a>, have also stuck with level design.) <br /><br />(For more info on this, see my GDC 2015 talk about <a href="http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2015/06/local-level-design-and-history-future.html" target="_blank">"Local level design, and a history / future of level design"</a> -- and to hear complaints about this workflow, see Joe Wintergreen's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ubu76gEvM8" target="_blank">"Hypothesising Negative Effects of Ubiquitous Modular Mesh Based Level Design")</a><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6ubu76gEvM8?rel=0" width="560"></iframe><br /><br />But I feel like character art is getting a bit less prestigious these days, and we can blame the new AAA technologies and workflows for character art emerging around 2014. Why study how to sculpt a human arm and how cloth drapes on an arm, when you can just grab some body scan data and simulate the garment in Marvelous Designer and texture it in Substance Painter with a few clicks? And now it might get even easier -- <a href="http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2015/07/psa-free-and-complete-photorealistic-3d.html" target="_blank">I'm having a lot of fun with Mixamo Fuse, which is a free MMO character creator without the MMO. (Anyone can now look like a 2014 FPS very easily</a>.) Basically, character art was so expensive that a lot of people wanted to make it cheaper, so now a lot of tasks can be automated. The generated results can still be pretty substandard compared to the handmade work of a master, but the fact that you can compare them at all, is kind of shocking. There's always been jokes about a "Make Art" button on tools, and this isn't that far from it.<br /><br />Meanwhile, environment art has been pretty comfortable with automation for a while. Very well-known tools like World Machine can generate entire continents within minutes, and the popular SpeedTree middleware can cover that world in forests. So much environment art in your average realistic FPS from 2000-2010 involved going to CGTextures.com (now just "<a href="http://textures.com/">Textures.com</a>"!) and downloading copious amounts of photosource to tweak in Photoshop. The best environment artists, of course, were still skilled at painting and sculpting, but for a long time this production work hasn't always felt like traditional painting or sculpting -- it hasn't felt like "Art" for a while.<br /><br />Well, until now.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-K6S74Gdoqio/VtNp4MNV05I/AAAAAAAAE9A/Jg90590qOJQ/s1600/thewitness_trees.png" width="540" /></div><br />If I had to sum up The Witness and Firewatch, it would be, <a href="http://the-witness.net/news/2013/06/2157/" target="_blank">"these games give a shit about trees."</a><br /><br />We can unpack a lot of techno-capitalist reasons why environment artists like trees in games. Rocks and houses seem kind of like solved problems, but complex foliage always requires some imagination, enough to merit <a href="http://video-game-foliage.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">its own "fuck yeah video game foliage" fan tumblr</a>. There are so many <a href="http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Foliage" target="_blank">different schools of thought about making 3D foliage</a>, and this always has to be balanced with sharing performance with characters and AI. (Fortunately, both games have neither.)<br /><br />Sculpting trees is also the kind of skill that demands a lot of classical observation and skill. It's still pretty difficult to 3D scan a whole tree, due to the sheer complexity and scale, versus having a person walk into your specialized studio setup and try to stand still. But once you sculpt and finish a few of these trees, then you can copy-and-paste them to make an impressive forest. (In contrast, you can't make endless copies of a house, it'll feel too obvious and cheap.) If you want a pretty reliable indicator of what year a game was released, just compare the technique and technology in the trees. Trees are basically the Nathan Drakes of environment art.<br /><br />So, these games without characters are about letting the environment artists show off. The character art, what relatively little there is, acts as support to ground your presence in this place. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-w8Wejjms5fw/VtNloXuW9QI/AAAAAAAAE8o/eN7e0uu8shQ/s640/firewatch_trees.jpg" width="540" /></div><br />So here's a question -- what are these games' attitudes toward trees and nature?<br /><br />I think Firewatch yearns for a studied effortlessness. It takes place in a slightly overgrown wilderness that isn't really wild if you think about it, but wild enough to let you humor yourself that you are in an untainted pocket of nature preserved in its natural state. There's a concern about authenticity and realness here. "This is what being in a remote watchtower feels like!"<br /><br />Every space in Firewatch must feel lived-in and real, but in that weird game-y "environmental storytelling" kind of way. The clutter feels arranged by a professional clutter designer, a pile of poignant junk posed just right, in that peculiar way that we're supposed to notice and mark as "Narrative" -- but much like the implausibility of Gone Home's characters constantly pouring out their deepest thoughts within countless letters and tapes in a fever of ludonarrative hysteria, we players suspend our disbelief and accept this all as a mode of Video Game Storytelling.<br /><br />Basically, Firewatch's world feels fake in a way that contemporary players are pretty accustomed to, so we don't mind. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pkztwZzcWCM/VtNlPRhux0I/AAAAAAAAE8k/XG3pO91Gh4g/s640/2016-02-13_00002.jpg" width="540" /></div><br />But unlike Gone Home, where all the events have already occurred and the player must trace a chronology after the fact, Firewatch invites the player to personalize the story. Players can keep clutter objects of their own, customize other items (journals, letters, maps, broken windows), and take nature photos with an in-game camera. It makes sense as a natural-feeling progression in design from Gone Home.<br /><br /><i>(One possible idea for future advances in clutter storytelling: have disembodied NPCs, in turn, react to your selection or assemblage of objects. "NPC: dear player, I noticed you put my gift in the trash can. I don't like that." Complete the interactive loop; the narrative equivalent of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zendo_%28game%29" target="_blank">Zendo</a>.)</i><br /><ul></ul>Firewatch even mixes in <a href="http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2012/07/rule-databases-for-contextual-narrative.html" target="_blank">some procedural storytelling AI tech I've been yelling about for a while</a>, as well as a short Twine-inspired prologue, some subtle feminist commentary, and hints of Gay Stuff(TM), all enabled by some modest tech industry funding (co-publisher Panic Inc.) and ex- dev expertise (ex-Telltale, ex-Double Fine, ex-2K, ex-ex-ex...) working on widely available game engine middleware. Did I mention it's only 2-4 hours long?<br /><br />Firewatch is a game that only could've been made recently, circa 2015 - 2016, conceptually / creatively / economically / technically.<br /><br />And The Witness... kind of isn't.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vDWWmcL74vk/VtNmT9RDLsI/AAAAAAAAE8w/TVD_HyWvYbk/s1600/sota-kinkade.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="540" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Want to read any defenses of Thomas Kinkade's boring art? I'd recommend Joan Didion's -- she argues every window is glowing as if <i>on fire</i>. She means it metaphorically, but I'm more persuaded by the idea of literal fire.</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />The Witness, with its artificial segmentation of different areas, feels more like a garden or a theme park. In fact, many of the spaces in The Witness are specifically presented as cultivated gardens. Every branch and leaf is an instrument for Jonathan Blow's purpose, his island that he is graciously allowing you to visit. It feels like a puzzle-resort (there's literally a section of the game that is a resort area) and you are just a visitor in this virtual Versailles.<br /><br />But a lot of that ideology just feels so "tacky." No one builds gardens in spirals anymore, no one plants 20 different colors of trees within the same vista. It's unfashionable. To be very uncharitable, the Witness is basically an explorable <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kinkade" target="_blank">Thomas Kinkade</a> painting filled with hundreds of hidden object puzzles and sudoku puzzles, right down to the countless glowing windows and panels.<br /><br />This conceit works until it loses its nerve, and makes the huge mistake of compromise -- of trying to bring a human element back into this thing that isn't about people. It does this in the least subtle way possible, literally with YouTube videos and podcasts of Scientific Rational Men talking about science and Spiritual Emotional Women talking about meditation. For all of Jonathan Blow's talk of letting players put it all together for themselves, it's weird how this aspect of the game begs to explain itself. In a sense, these voices are some of the worst character art in the history of games.<br /><br />Rule number one, of Thomas Kinkades or hiking games, is to avoid close-ups of people. The <a href="http://www.zam.com/article/114/the-top-10-saddest-statues-in-the-witness" target="_blank">dozens of statues in The Witness feel desperate</a> for meaning and importance, and worst of all ignorant of the lukewarm attempts at "statue storytelling" in AAA games. Only the oldest sculpture gardens have classical stone statues of people in them; if you are trying to build a new kind of sculpture garden but use old techniques, it's going to feel very kitsch and irrelevant.<br /><br />Firewatch felt fake in a natural way. The Witness feels fake in a jarring way. <br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ad8LCRa7IYo/VtNpE1k72mI/AAAAAAAAE88/byGVd7lTPAw/s640/myst.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="540" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Myst used to seem impossibly realistic; now it looks cartoonishly clean, like Team Fortress 2</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />This feeling, of being unplugged from contemporary game culture as a whole, is probably on purpose. The Witness is the same core concept from 1993's Myst, packed with 20 different puzzle mechanics that demand at least 25 hours of play to achieve a "first ending", self-funded for years from the excess of an indie business model that no longer exists, hand-built on a homemade game engine and toolset programmed in C++, with a supposedly "apolitical" narrative agenda that doesn't care about race, gender, or sexuality. It even sells for $40, the standard US retail PC game price from the 90s. The Witness is profoundly Uncool.<br /><br />So let's be nice and judge it more on its technical merits: this game impressively functionalizes environment art and technology. Tree models are puzzles, real-time projected shadows are puzzles, specular masks are puzzles, additive color light sources and blending modes are puzzles... UVs, shaders, and screen space are puzzles. The environment artist basically functioned as a game designer here.<br /><br />It's kind of a beautiful reversal from before, when environment art used to be a secondary thing that designers did. Now in The Witness, level design is more like a secondary thing that environment artists do. In Firewatch's case, much of the storytelling is tied up in the environmental assets, so that the environment artist also doubles as a narrative designer and writer.<br /><br />Who decides what a game is? Traditionally, we've bestowed auteurship (of, say, Doom) upon lead programmers (John Carmack) or designers (John Romero) but rarely the artists ("Adrian Carmack", whoever that is?)... with The Witness and Firewatch, that thinking increasingly makes no sense, considering all the weight that environment art is made to carry.<br /><br />The Witness: a game by <a href="https://twitter.com/facaelectrica">Luis Antonio</a>, <a href="http://www.orsispanyol.com/">Orsi Spanyol</a>, <a href="http://www.edoublea.com/">Eric A. Anderson</a>.<br />Firewatch: a game by <a href="https://twitter.com/thatjaneng">Jane Ng</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/ollymoss">Olly Moss</a>.Robert Yanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05595128450637115574noreply@blogger.com